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J 
^ 


THE    MINUTE    MAN 


ON   THE 


FRONTIER 


THE  REV.  W    G.  PUDDEFOOT,  A.M. 

* 

FIELD    SECRETARY   OF    THE   HOME   MISSIONARY   SOCIETY 


NEW  YORK:   46  EAST  14™  STREET  ' 

THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  COMPANY 

BOSTON  :  100  PURCHASE  STREET 


COPYRIGHT,  1895, 
BY  THOMAS  Y.  CROWELL  &  Co. 


TYPOGRAPHY    BY    C.    J.     PETERS    &   SON, 
BOSTON. 


PREFACE. 

is 

x 

•> 

r' 
IN    a    very    able    review    of   Maspero's 

"  Dawn  of  Civilization,"  the  writer  says 
"  that  for  hundreds  of  years  it  was  be- 
lieved that  history  had  two  eyes  ;  but 

-v 

now  we  know  she  has  at  least  three, 
and  that  archaeology  is  the  third." 

This  may  account  for  the  saying  that 
"  history  is  a  lie  agreed  to  ;  "  for  it  needs 
to  be  argus-eyed  to  give  us  any  adequate 
idea  of  the  truth ;  and  while  the  writer 
of  the  following  sketches  does  not  aspire 
to  the  rank  of  a  historian,  he  has  been 
induced  to  print  them  for  two  or  three 
reasons.  First,  because  urged  to  by 
friends  ;  and  secondly,  because  of  the 
unique  condition  of  American  frontier 


111 


IV  PREFACE. 

life  that  is  so  rapidly  passing  away  for- 
ever. 

One  may  read  Macaulay,  Froude, 
Knight,  and,  in  fact,  a  half-dozen  his- 
tories of  England,  and  then  sit  down  to 
the  gossipy  sketches  of  Sidney  culled 
from  Pepys's,  Evelyn's,  and  other  diaries, 
and  get  a  truer  view  of  English  life 
than  in  all  the  great  histories  combined. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  give  even  the 
slightest  sketch  of  a  country  so  large  as 
ours  for  a  single  decade  in  many  vol- 
umes ;  although,  in  one  sense,  we  are 
more  homogeneous  than  many  suppose. 

There  was  a  greater  difference  in  two 
counties  in  England  before  the  advent 
of  the  railways  than  between  two  of  our 
Northern  States  to-day.  To-day  a  man 
may  travel  from  Boston  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, and  he  will  find  the  same  head- 
lines in  his  morning  papers,  and  for  three 
thousand  miles  will  find  the  scenery 


PREFACE.  V 

desecrated  by  the  wretched  quack  medi- 
cine advertisements  that  produce  "  that 
tired  feeling"  which  they  profess  to  cure. 
If  he  goes  into  one  county  in  the 
mother  country,  he  will  find  the  people 
singeing  the  bristles  of  their  swine,  and 
counting  by  the  score,  in  another  by 
the  stone,  etc.,  and  customs  kept  up 
that  had  grown  settled  before  travel  be- 
came general.  But  with  us  it  is  differ- 
ent. We  had  no  time  to  become  crys- 
tallized before  the  iron  horse,  the  great 
cosmopolitan  of  the  age,  rapidly  levelled 
all  distinctions ;  and  it  is  only  by  get- 
ting away  from  the  railway,  and  into 
settlements  that  still  retain  all  the  primi- 
tiveness  of  an  earlier  day,  that  we  find 
the  conditions  of  which  much  of  this 
book  treats. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

PREFACE iii 

I.  THE  FRONTIER  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  WORLD,  i 

II.  EARLY  REMINISCENCES n 

III.  THE  MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER  ...  22 

IV.  THE  IMMIGRANT  ON  THE  FRONTIER     ...  48 
V.  THE  ODDITIES  OF  THE  FRONTIER    ....  61 

VI.  LIGHTS  AND  SHADOWS 68 

VII.  SATURDAY  AFTERNOON  IN  THE  SOUTH  ...  77 

VIII.  ALL  SORTS  AND  CONDITIONS  OF  MEN  ...  82 

IX.  THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME 91 

X.  THE  NORTH-WEST 102 

XI.  A  BRAND  NEW  WOODS  VILLAGE 107 

XII.  OUT-OF-THE-WAY  PLACES 123 

XIII.  COCKLE,  CHESS,  AND  WHEAT 134 

XIV.  CHIPS    FROM    OTHER    LOGS 142 

XV.  A  TRIP  IN  NORTHERN  MICHIGAN      .     .     .     .  151 

XVI.  BLACK  CLOUDS  WITH  SILVER  LININGS  ...  163 

XVII.  SAD  EXPERIENCES 171 

XVIII.  A  SUNDAY  ON  SUGAR  ISLAND 180 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS, 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIX.  THE  NEEDS  OF  THE  MINUTE-MAN     .     .     .  189 

XX.  THE  MINUTE-MAN  IN  THE  MINER'S  CAMP  .  197 

XXI.  THE  SABBATH  ON  THE  FRONTIER  .     .     .     .  211 

XXII.  THE  FRONTIER  OF  THE  SOUTH-WEST      .     .  220 

XXIII.  DARK  PLACES  OF  THE  INTERIOR    ....  227 

XXIV.  THE  DANGEROUS  NATIVE  CLASSES      .     .     .  235 
XXV.  CHRISTIAN  WORK  IN  THE  LUMBER-TOWN    .  244 

XXVI.  Two  KINDS  OF  FRONTIER 255 

XXVII.  BREAKING  NEW  GROUND 262 

XXVIII.  SOWING  THE  SEED 270 

XXIX.  "  HARVEST  HOME  " 277 

XXX.  INJEANNY  vs.  HEAVEN .  285 

XXXI.  THE  LATEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA     .     .  293 

XXXII.  THE  PIONEER  WEDDING 318 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PORTRAIT  OF  THE  AUTHOR Frontispiece 

INDIAN  CAMP,  GRAND  TRAVERSE  BAY  .     .     .       PAGE  16 

VIEW  NEAR  PETOSKEY,  MICH. 20 

TYPICAL  LOG  HOUSE 46 

TYPICAL  SOD  HOUSE 61 

A  SOUTHERN  SAW-MILL 91 

WINTER  SCENE  IN  NORTHERN  MICHIGAN 127 

•» 

A  MINUTE  MAN'S  PARSONAGE 190 

OLDEST   HOUSE   IN   THE   UNITED  STATES,  SANTA  FE, 

NEW  MEXICO 220 

BREAKING  NEW  GROUND 262 

LOOKING  FOR  A  TOWN  LOT 294 

FORMING  IN  LINE  TO  VOTE  FOR  MAYOR 296 

INDIANS  AT  PAWNEE,  OKLAHOMA  TER 301 

AFTER  A  STORM,  GUTHRIE,  OKLAHOMA  TER.     .     .     .  306 

FIRST  CHURCH  AND  PARSONAGE,  ALVA,  OKLAHOMA  TER.  307 

AT  A  CHURCH  DEDICATION 310 


THE    MINUTE-MAN 


ON 


THE     FRONTIER. 


I. 

THE   FRONTIER    IN    RELATION  TO   THE  WORLD. 

THE  opening  up  of  a  new  frontier  is 
world-wide  in  its  operations.  Minnesota 
entered  the  Union  as  a  State  in  1858. 
The  putting  to  practical  use  the  Falls  of 
St.  Anthony  was  felt  all  over  Europe. 
Thousands  of  little  country  mills,  nestling 
amid  the  trees,  and  adding  to  the  beauty 
of  the  English  pastoral  scenery,  to-day 
stand  idle,  the  great  wheels  covered  with 
green  moss;  and  Tennyson's  "  Miller"  be- 
comes a  reminiscence.  Iowa  became  a 
State  in  1846,  and  now  leads  the  world  in 
the  production  of  corn  ;  and  although  it 


2  MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

is  a  thousand  miles  from  the  seaboard, 
yet  through  its  immense  production,  and 
with  the  cheapening  of  transportation,  we 
find  over  seventy  thousand  Italians  em- 
migrating  to  this  country,  as,  in  spite  of 
low  wages,  they  cannot  compete  on  the 
plains  of  Lombardy.  (See  Wells's  "  Eco- 
nomic Changes.")  — We  find  that  the  man 
at  the  front  can  ship  from  Chicago  to 
Liverpool  the  product  of  five  acres  of 
grain  for  less  money  than  the  cost  of 
manuring  one  acre  of  land  in  England. 
(Ibid.) 

Every  time  a  new  frontier  in  America 
is  opened,  it  means  both  prosperity  and 
disaster.  So  large  are  the  opportunities, 
so  rich  the  results,  that  at  first  all  calcula- 
tions are  upset.  Natural  gas  in  the  Middle 
States  changes  the  price  of  coal  in  Europe. 
The  finding  of  a  tin-mine  is  felt  in  Corn- 
wall and  Wales  the  next  day.  The  open- 
ing of  the  iron-mines  in  Michigan  makes 
Cornish  towns  spring  up  in  the  upper 
peninsula,  while  the  finding  of  ore  in  deso- 
late places  has  caused  communities  to 


THE   FRONTIER  AND    THE    WORLD.  3 

spring  up  with  all  the  conditions  of  a  cos- 
mopolitan civilization,  and  we  have  to-day 
men  living  twenty-five  miles  from  trees 
or  grass.  But  such  is  the  energy  of  the 
frontier  type,  that  grass-plats  have  been 
carried  and  planted  on  the  solid  rocks,  as 
in  Duluth,  where  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  are  expended  in  the  grading  of 
streets,  and  the  opening  of  the  sewers, 
all  having  to  be  blasted  to  do  the  work. 
North  Dakota  was  a  wilderness  of  150,- 
ooo  square  miles,  and  had  not  produced 
a  single  bushel  of  wheat  for  sale,  in  1881. 
In  1886  it  produced  nearly  35,000,000 
bushels  ;  in  1887,  62,553,000.  (See  Wells's 
"  Recent  Economic  Changes.")  The  open- 
ing up  of  these  immense  territories  starts 
railways  from  California  to  Siberia ;  for, 
with  the  Great  West  competing,  Russia  is 
stirred  to  greater  effort.  India,  with  her 
great  commerce  with  Great  Britain,  needs 
a  shorter  route;  and  the  Suez  canal  is 
made.  Australia  must  compete  with  the 
Western  plains ;  and  great  steamers,  filled 
with  refrigerators,  are  constructed  for 


4  MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

carrying  fresh  beef.    The  South  American 
republics  respond  in  return. 

The  hardy  pioneer,  ever  on  the  move, 
explores  well  nigh  impracticable  routes  in 
search  of  precious  metals.  The  inventive 
mechanic  must  respond  with  an  engine 
that  can  climb  anywhere ;  and  in  almost 
inaccessible  mountain  eyries  the  eagle  is 
disturbed  by  the  shriek  of  the  locomotive, 
and  the  bighorn  must  take  refuge  with  the 
bison  in  the  National  Park.  The  news  of 
new  mines  flies  around  the  world,  fortunes 
are  made  and  lost  in  a  day,  and  the 
destinies  of  nations  determined.  A  great 
crop  starts  railways,  steamships.  Miners, 
smelting-works,  iron  and  steel,  respond. 
Letters  fly  across  the  Atlantic,  and  return- 
ing steamers  are  filled  with  eager  men  and 
women,  who  answer  the  letters  in  person. 
Down  from  the  far  north,  Sweden  and 
Norway  have  responded  with  over  a  million 
of  their  children.  Great  Britain  has  sent 
nearly  six  millions.  Germany  follows  with 
4,417,950;  Italy,  392,000;  France,  315, 
130;  Austria,  304,976;  Denmark,  114, 


THE   FRONTIER  AND    THE    WORLD.  5 

858;  Hungary,  141,601  ;  Switzerland,  167,- 
203  ;  Russia  and  Poland,  326,994;  Nether- 
lands, 99,516;  and  so  on:  in  all,  a  total 
for  Europe  in  fifty  years  of  over  13,000,- 
ooo,  the  great  majority  of  whom  have 
been  started  from  their  homes  by  the 
opening  up  of  new  frontiers. 

It  has  been  stated  on  good  authority, 
that  sixty  per  cent  of  the  Germans  that 
come  are  between  the  ages  of  fifteen  and 
forty,  while  all  Germany  has  only  thirty 
per  cent  of  that  age. 

On  the  authority  of  Dr.  Farr,  quoted 
by  R.  Mayo  Smith  in  his  "  Emigration 
and  Immigration,"  he  calculates  the  money 
value  of  the  immigrants  from  the  British 
Isles  from  1837  to  1876  reached  the  enor- 
mous sum  of  1,400,000  pounds  sterling, 
or  7,000,000,000  of  dollars,  an  average  of 
175,000,000  dollars  a  year;  while  the 
amount  sent  back  from  British  North 
America  and  the  United  States  since 
1848  was  but  ^32, 294, 596.  And  what 
has  been  produced  by  the  immigrant  and 
exported  amounts  to  many  hundred  mil- 


6  MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

lions  of  dollars.  It  has  been  computed 
that  the  country  has  been  pushed  for- 
ward a  quarter  of  a  century  by  this  vast 
mass  of  immigrants,  nearly  all  of  whom 
labor  for  a  living. 

The  frontiers  of  America  will  yet  change 
the  world.  When  in  the  not  distant 
future  hundreds  of  millions  cover  the 

•at  continent,  clotted  with  schools  and 
churches,  and  an  intelligent  population 
one  language,  and  with  other 
millions  in  Africa,  Australia,  and  the  isl- 
and-, of  tin-  sea,  using  the  same  langtL. 
the  time  will  come  when  they  will  arbi- 
trate lor  the  \\orld,  and  war  shall  he  no 
HIM  Long  before  the  Atlantic  cable 

\\a.  -.irrtrhed  BCTO89  the  ocean,  millions 
c!  he.  i-  vibrating  from  this 

land   to   all    parts    of    Kurope  ;    and   to-day 
the  letters  lly  homeward  from  the  frontier 
immigrants    in    their    sod    houses,    bearing 
>  I   cheer   in   words  and  mon< 

The    freedom    of    the     frontier    is    con- 

..    and    the    poor    Kuropean    sir 
hauler   than   ever   to    reach    his    kin 


THE   FRONTIER  AXD    THE    WORLD.  7 

the  sea.  And  when  we  consider  that  only 
300,000  square  miles  out  of  1,500,000 
miles  of  arable  land  is  under  cultiva- 
tion, and  that  already  the  farmers  of  Eng- 
land and  most  parts  of  Europe  are  being 
pushed  to  the  wall,  we  begin  to  realize 
that  the  growth  of  the  frontiers  of  the 
United  States  not  only  influences  our 
own  land,  but  changes  materially  the 
course  of  events  in  the  whole  world.  The 
above  figures  are  by  Mr.  Edward  Atkin- 
son, as  quoted  in  substance  from  "  Recent 
Economic  Changes." 

To  show  the  growth  of  one  State  dur- 
ing the  past  fifty  years,  let  us  take  Mich- 
igan. In  1840  Michigan  had  a  population 
of  212,267;  in  1890,  2,093,889.  In  1840 
there  were  three  small  railroads,  with  a 
total  mileage  of  59  miles.  In  1890  there 
were  over  7,000  miles.  "In  1840  [I  quote 
from  Hon.  B.  W.  Cutcheon,  in  "  Fifty 
Years'  Growth  in  Michigan"]  mining 
had  not  begun.  In  1890  over  7,000,000 
tons  of  iron  were  shipped  from  her  mines ; 
while  the  output  of  copper  had  reached 


8  MINUTE-MAN  ON  l^HE  FRONTIER. 

over  a  100,000,000  Ibs.,  and  valued  at 
#15,845,427.28.  The  salt  industry,  a  late 
one,  rose  from  4,000  bbls.  in  1860  to 
3*838,937  bbls.  in  1890;  while  the  value 
of  her  lumber  products  for  1890  was  over 
$55,000,000.  In  1840  there  were  neither 
graded  nor  high  schools,  normal  schools 
nor  colleges.  In  1890,  654,502  children 
were  of  school  age,  with  an  enrolment  of 
427,032,  with  33,975  additional  attending 
private  schools.  These  children  were 
taught  by  15,990  teachers,  who  received 
in  salaries  $3,326,287." 

In  1840  Michigan  had  30,144  horses 
and  mules,  185,190  neat  cattle,  99,618 
sheep.  In  1890  there  were  579,896 
horses,  3,779  mules,  of  milch  cows  459,- 
475,  oxen  and  other  cattle  508,938,  of 
sheep  2,353,779,  of  swine  893,037.  The 
total  value  came  to  $74,892,618.  Over 
1,700  men  are  engaged  in  the  fisheries, 
with  nearly  a  million  dollars  invested, 
with  a  total  yield  of  all  fish  of  34,490,184 
Ibs.,  valued  at  over  a  million  and  a  half 
of  dollars.  The  value  of  her  apples  and 


THE   FRONTIER  AND    THE    WORLD.  9 

peaches  in  1890  was  $944,332  ;  of  cherries, 
pears,  and  plums,  $65,217  ;  of  straw- 
berries, $166,033  ;  of  other  berries,  $267,- 
398;  and  of  grapes,  $122,394.  The 
wheat  crop  for  1891  was  valued  at  $27,- 
486,910;  the  oats  at  $9,689,441  ;  besides 
811,977  bushels  of  buckwheat,  and  2,522,- 
376  bushels  of  barley.  The  capital  in- 
vested in  lumber  alone  was  $111,302,797. 
"  While  her  great  University,  which  saw 
its  first  student  in  1841,  and  which  had 
but  three  teachers,  one  of  them  acting  as 
president,  has  grown  to  be  one  of  the 
largest  in  the  nation,  with  eighty  pro- 
fessors and  instructors  and  2,700  students 
registered  on  her  rolls,  conferring  623 
degrees  upon  examination."  And  all  this 
but  the  partial  record  of  fifty  years  in 
one  State. 

Since  Michigan  was  entered  as  a  State 
fourteen  new  States  have  been  formed 
(not  counting  Texas)  and  three  Territories, 
with  an  aggregate  of  over  17,000,000 
square  miles  of  land,  and  a  population  of 
nearly  15,000,000,  nearly  all  of  which 


10         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER, 

fifty  years  ago  was  wilderness,  the  home 
of  the  Indian  and  the  wild  beasts.  With 
such  stupendous  changes  in  so  short  a 
time,  we  see  that  the  American  fron 
tiers  have  a  direct  and  powerful  influence 
in  changing  the  histories  and  destinies 
of  the  nations  of  the  whole  world. 


EARL  Y  REMINISCENCES.  1 1 


II. 

EARLY    REMINISCENCES. 

IT  was  in  the  spring  of  1859  that  I 
first  saw  the  frontier.  Our  way  was 
over  the  New  York  Central,  very  little 
of  which  had  two  tracks.  I  have  a  very 
vivid  recollection  of  the  worm  fences, 
the  log  houses,  and  the  great  forests 
that  we  passed  on  our  way  to  Upper 
Canada.  I  remember  the  hunters  com- 
ing towards  the  train  with  their  mocca- 
sons  on  and  the  bucks  slung  over  their 
shoulders.  I  have  since  that  time  seen 
many  men  who  were  the  first  to  cut  a 
tree  in  this  county  or  that  town.  There 
were  about  forty  thousand  miles  of  rail- 
way in  the  whole  land  at  that  date, 
against  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  miles 
to-day.  Cities  which  are  now  the  capi- 
tals of  States  were  the  feeding-ground 
of  buffalo ;  wolves  and  black  bears  had 


12         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

their  dens  where  to-day  we  can  see  a 
greater  miracle  in  stone  than  Cheops ; 
i.e.,  a  stone  State  House  built  inside  the 
appropriation  !  Then  six  miles  of  travel 
on  the  new  roads  smashed  more  china 
than  three  thousand  miles  by  sea  and 
rail.  The  little  towns  were  but  open- 
ings in  a  forest  that  extended  for  hun- 
dreds of  miles.  The  best  house  in  the 
village  without  a  cellar ;  roots  were  kept 
in  pits.  Houses  could  be  rented  for  two 
dollars  per  month,  where  to-day  they 
are  twelve  dollars.  Pork  was  two  dol- 
lars a  hundred  ;  beef  by  the  quarter,  two 
and  one-half  cents  a  pound  ;  potatoes, 
fifteen  cents  a  bushel.  Men  received 
seventy-five  cents  a  day  for  working  on 
the  railroad.  Cord-wood  was  two  dollars 
a  cord  ;  and  you  could  get  it  cut,  split, 
and  piled  for  fifty  cents  a  cord.  Men 
wore  stogy  boots,  generally  with  one 
leg  of  the  trousers  outside  and  one  in. 
Blue  denham  was  the  prevailing  suit  for 
workingmen.  The  shoemaker  cut  his 
shoes,  *and  they  were  sent  out  to  be 


EARLY  REMINISCENCES.  13 

bound  by  women.  The  women  wore 
spring-heeled  shoes,  print  dresses,  and 
huge  sunbonnets ;  and  in  the  summer- 
time the  settlers  went  barefooted.  The 
roads  were  simply  indescribable.  When 
a  tree  fell,  it  was  cut  off  within  an  inch 
of  the  ruts ;  the  wagon  would  sink  to 
the  hubs,  and  need  prying  out  with  poles  ; 
harnesses  were  never  cleaned,  and  boot- 
blacking  had  no  sale.  But  the  school- 
house  was  in  every  township.  In  the 
older  settlements  could  be  seen  the  log- 
hut  in  which  the  young  couple  started 
housekeeping,  then  a  log  house  of  more 
pretentious  size ;  the  frame-house  which 
followed,  and  a  fine  brick  house  where 
the  family  now  lived,  showing  the  rapid 
progress  made. 

This  was  in  western  Canada.  Toronto 
was  separated  from  Yorkville,  but  was  a 
busy,  substantial  city.  I  remember  the 
stores  being  closed  when  Lincoln  was 
buried,  and  black  bunting  hung  along 
the  principal  streets.  I  remember,  too, 
the  men  who  were  loudest  in  their  curses 


14         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

at  the  government  and  against  Lincoln, 
how  the  tears  came  to  their  eyes,  and 
how  that  event  brought  them  to  their 
senses.  Most  of  them  were  shoemakers 
from  New  England. 

In  1873  I  crossed  into  Michigan  with 
my  family.  Even  as  late  as  that  the 
greater  part  of  northern  Michigan,  and 
especially  the  upper  peninsula,  was  terra 
incognita  to  most  of  the  people  of  that 
State.  The  railroads  stopped  at  a  long 
distance  this  side  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw. 
The  lumbermen  had  but  skimmed  the 
best  of  the  trees  ;  and,  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  isolated  settlements  on  the  lakes 
and  up  the  larger  rivers,  it  was  an  un- 
broken wilderness,  abounding  in  fish,  deer, 
bears, .  wolves,  and  wild-cats  ;  in  fact,  a 
hunter's  paradise,  as  it  is  even  to  this 
day. 

But  with  the  extension  of  the  railways 
to  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw,  and  the  open- 
ing of  new  lines  to  the  north  into  the 
iron  mines  of  Menominee  to  the  Gogebic 
range,  the  great  copper  mines  of  the  Ke- 


EARLY  REMINISCENCES.  15 

weenaw  peninsula,  and  the  ever-increasing 
traffic  of  the  lakes,  the  changes  were  sim- 
ply marvellous.  .  Some  things  I  shall  say 
will  seem  paradoxical,  but  they  are  never- 
theless true  to  life. 

The  greater  parts  of  southern  Michigan 
and  southern  Wisconsin  were  settled  by 
people  from  New  York  State  ;  and  long  be- 
fore the  northern  parts  of  Michigan  and 
Wisconsin  were  opened  up,  new  States  had 
risen  in  the  West,  and  the  tide  of  immigra- 
tion swept  past  towards  new  frontiers,  leav- 
ing vast  frontiers  behind  them.  Sometimes 
a  few  stray  men  with  money  at  their  com- 
mand would  pierce  the  country  and  form  a 
settlement,  as  in  the  case  of  Traverse  City. 
Here  for  years  the  mail  was  brought  by 
the  Indians  on  dog-sledges  in  the  winter. 
It  took  eight  days  to  reach  Grand  Rapids 
on  snow-shoes.  It  is  four  hundred  miles 
by  water  to  Chicago.  Sometimes  the 
winters  were  so  long  that  the  provisions 
had  to  be  dealt  out  very  sparingly  ;  but 
all  the  time  the  little  colony  was  growing, 
and  when  at  last  the  railroads  reached  it, 


1 6        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

the  traveller,  after  riding  for  miles  through 
virgin  forests,  would  come  upon  a  little 
city  of  four  thousand  people,  with  good 
churches,  fine  schools,  and  one  store  that 
cost  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  build. 
If  it  chanced  to  be  summer-time  he 
would  see  the  tepees  of  the  Indians  along 
the  bay,  and  two  blocks  back  civilized 
homes  with  all  the  conveniences  and  lux- 
uries of  modern  life.  Here  a  huge  canoe 
made  of  a  single  log,  and  there  a  mam- 
moth steamer  with  all  the  elegances  of 
an  ocean-liner.  Should  he  go  on  board 
of  one  of  the  steamers  coasting  around 
the  lakes  with  supplies,  he  would  pass 
great  bays  with  lovely  islands,  and  steam 
within  a  stone's  throw  of  a  comparatively 
rare  bird,  the  great  northern  diver,  and 
suddenly  find  himself  near  a  wharf  with 
a  village  in  sight  —  a  great  saw-mill  cut- 
ting its  hundreds  of  thousands  of  feet  of 
lumber  a  day;  and  near  by,  Indian  graves 
with  the  food  still  fresh  inside,  and  a  tame 
deer  with  a  collar  and  bell  around  its 
neck  trotting  around  the  streets. 


EARLY  REMINISCENCES.  1 7 

He  can  sit  and  fish  for  trout  on  his 
doorstep  that  borders  the  little  stream, 
or  he  can  get  on  the  company's  locomo- 
tive and  run  twenty  miles  back  into  the 
woods  and  see  the  coveys  of  partridges 
rising  in  clouds,  and  here  and  there  a 
timid  doe  and  her  fawn,  whose  curiosity 
is  greater  than  their  fears,  until  the 
whistle  blows,  and  they  are  off  like  a  shot 
into  the  deep  forest,  near  where  the  black 
bear  is  munching  raspberries  in  a  ten- 
thousand-acre  patch,  while  millions  of 
bushels  of  whortleberries  will  waste  for 
lack  of  pickers.  He  can  sit  on  a  point  of 
an  inland  lake  and  catch  minnows  on  one 
side,  and  pull  up  black  bass  on  the  other ; 
and  if  a  "tenderfoot"  he  will  bring  home 
as  much  as  he  can  carry,  expecting  to  be 
praised  for  his  skill.  He  is  mortified  at 
the  request  to  please  bury  them.  He 
will  ride  over  ground  that  less  than  fifteen 
years  ago  could  be  bought  for  a  song 
and  to-day  produces  millions,  and  is  dotted 
with  towns  and  huge  furnaces  glowing 
night  and  day. 


1 8         MINUTE-MAN  ON   7"HE   FRONTIER. 

If  in  the  older  settled  parts,  he  will 
ride  through  cornfields  whose  tassels  are 
up  to  the  car  windows,  where  the  origi- 
nal settler  paddled  his  skiff  and  caught 
pickerel  and  the  ague  at  the  same  time, 
and  who  is  still  alive  to  tell  the  story. 
He  can  talk  with  a  man  who  knew  every 
white  man  by  name  when  he  first  went 
there,  and  remembers  the  Indian  peep- 
ing in  through  his  log-cabin  window, 
but  whose  grandchildren  have  graduated 
from  a  university  with  twenty-seven  hun- 
dred students,  where  he  helped  build  the 
log  schoolhouse ;  who  remembers  when 
he  had  to  send  miles  for  salt,  and  yet  was 
living  over  a  bed  of  it  big  enough  to 
salt  the  world  down. 

He  had  nothing  but  York  State  pump- 
kins and  wild  cranberries  for  his  Thanks- 
giving dinner,  with  salt  pork  for  turkey ; 
and  he  lives  to-day  in  one  of  the  great 
fruit  belts  of  the  world,  and  ships  his 
turkeys  by  the  ton  to  the  East ;  and  to- 
day in  the  North  the  same  experience  is 
going  on.  Places  where  the  mention  of 


EARLY  REMINISCENCES.  ig 

an  apple  makes  the  teeth  water,  and  where 
you  can  still  see  them  come  wrapped  in 
tissue  paper  like  oranges,  and  yet,  para- 
doxical as  it  may  seem,  you  can  enter  a 
lumber-camp  and  find  the  men  regaled  on 
roast  chicken  and  eating  cucumbers  be- 
fore the  seed  is  sown  in  that  part  of  the 
country. 

Here  are  farms  worth  over  eighty 
thousand  dollars,  which  but  a  few  years 
ago  were  entered  by  the  homesteader 
who  had  to  live  on  potatoes  and  salt, 
and  cut  wild  hay  in  summer,  and  draw 
it  to  town  on  a  cedar  jumper,  in  order  to 
get  flour  for  his  hungry  children.  Here 
on  an  island  are  men  living  who  used  to 
leave  their  farming  to  see  the  one  steamer 
unload  and  load,  or  watch  a  schooner 
drawn  up  over  the  Rapids,  and  who  now 
see  sweeping  by  their  farms  a  procession 
of  craft  whose  tonnage  is  greater  than 
all  the  ocean  ports  of  the  country. 

I  have  sat  on  the  deck  of  a  little 
steamer  and  drawn  pictures  for  the  In- 
dians, who  took  them  and  marched  off 


20         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

with  the  smile  of  a  schoolboy  getting  a 
prize  chromo,  and  in  less  than  five  years 
from  that  time  I  have  at  the  same  place 
sat  down  in  a  hotel  lighted  with  elec- 
tricity, and  a  menu  equal  to  any  in  the 
country,  with  a  bronze  portrait  of  Gen- 
eral Grant  embossed  on  the  top.  Within 
ten  years  I  have  preached,  with  an  In- 
dian chief  for  an  interpreter,  in  a  log 
house  in  which  a  half-brother  of  Kiel  of 
North-Western  fame  was  a  hearer,  where 
to-day  there  are  self-supporting  churches 
and  flourishing  schools. 

Less  than  sixteen  years  ago  I  stopped 
at  the  end  of  the  Michigan  Central  Rail- 
way, northern  division  ;  every  lot  was  filled 
with  stumps.  A  school  was  being  rapidly 
built,  while  the  church  had  a  lot  only. 
The  next  time  I  visited  the  town  it  had 
fine  churches  and  schools.  The  hotel  had 
a  beautiful  conservatory  filled  with  choice 
flowers.  I  could  take  my  train,  pass  on 
over  the  Straits  of  Mackinaw,  on  by  rail 
again,  and  clear  to  the  Pacific,  with 
sleeper  and  dining-car  attached. 


EARLY  REMINISCENCES,  21 

But  once  leave  your  railway,  and  soon 
you  can  get  to  settlements  twenty  years 
old  which  saw  the  first  buggy  last  year 
come  into  the  clearings.  Here  are  deep 
forests  where  the  preacher  on  his  way 
home  from  church  meets  the  panther  and 
the  wild-cat,  and  where  as  yet  he  must 
ford  the  rivers  and  build  his  church,  the 
first  in  nine  thousand  square  miles. 


22         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 


III. 

THE    MINUTE-MAN    ON    THE    FRONTIER. 

THE  minute-men  at  the  front  are  the 
nation's  cheapest  policemen  ;  and  strange 
as  it  may  seem,  these  men  stand  in  vital 
relations  to  all  the  great  cities  of  the 
country  from  which  they  are  so  far  re- 
moved. It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  every 
city  owes  its  life  and  increase  to  the  fresh 
infusion  of  country  blood,  and  it  depends 
largely  on  the  purity  of  that  blood  as  to 
what  the  moral  condition  of  the  city  shall 
be.  Therefore  it  is  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance that  Zion's  watchmen  shall. lift  up 
their  voices  day  and  night,  until  not  only 
the  wilderness  shall  be  glad  because  of 
them,  but  that  the  city's  walls  may  be 
named  Salvation  and  her  gates  Praise. 

Let  us  make  the  rounds  among  our 
minute-men  to  see  how  they  live  and  what 
they  do.  Our  road  leads  along  the  Grand 


MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER.         23 

Rapids  and  Indiana  Railway.  All  day  long 
we  have  been  flitting  past  new  towns,  and 
toward  night  we  plunge  into  the  dense 
forests  with  only  here  and  there  an  open- 
ing. The  fresh  perfume  of  the  balsam 
invades  the  cars,  the  clear  trout-streams 
pass  and  repass  under  the  track,  a  herd 
of  deer  scurry  yonder,  and  once  we  see 
a  huge  black  bear  swaying  between  two 
giant  hemlocks. 

At  eleven  P.M.  we  leave  the  train.  There 
is  a  drizzling  rain  through  which  we  see 
a  half-dozen  twinkling  lights.  As  the  train 
turns  a  curve  we  lose  sight  of  its  red  lights, 
and  feel  we  have  lost  our  best  friend.  A 
little  boy,  the  sole  human  being  in  sight, 
is  carrying  a  diminutive  mail-bag.  The 
sidewalk  is  only  about  thirty-six  feet  long. 
Then  among  the  stumps  we  wind  our 
slippery  way,  and  at  last  reach  the  only 
frame  house  for  miles.  To  the  north  and 
east  we  see  a  wilderness,  with  here  and 
there  a  hardy  settler's  hut,  sometimes  a 
wagon  with  a  cover  and  the  stump  of 
a  stove-pipe  sticking  through  the  top. 


24        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

After  climbing  the  stairs,  which  are 
destitute  of  a  balustrade,  we  enter  our 
room.  It  is  carpeted  with  a  horse-blanket. 
Starting  out  with  a  lumber  wagon  next 
morning,  with  axes  and  whip-saw,  we  hew 
our  way  through  the  forest  to  another  line 
of  railway,  and  returning,  are  asked  by 
the  people  in  the  settlement,  "  Wfll  it 
ever  be  settled?"  "  Could  a  man  raise 
apples?"  "  Snow  too  deep?"  "Mice 
girdle  all  the  trees,  eh  ? "  etc. 

Five  years  later,  on  a  sleeping-car,  we 
open  our  eyes  in  the  morning,  and  what 
a  change!  The  little  solitary  stations  that 
we  passed  before  are  surrounded  with 
houses.  White  puffs  of  steam  come  snap- 
ping out  from  factories.  A  weekly  paper, 
a  New  York  and  Boston  store,  and  the 
five-  and  ten-cent  counter  store  are  among 
the  developments.  Our  train  sweeps  on- 
ward, miles  beyond  our  first  stop  ;  and  in- 
stead of  the  lonely  lodging-house,  palatial 
hotels  invite  us,  bands  of  music  are  play- 
ing, the  bay  is  a  scene  of  magic,  here  a 
little  naphtha  launch,  and  there  a  steam 


MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER.         2$ 

yacht,  and  then  a  mighty  steamer  that 
makes  the  dock  cringe  its  whole  length 
as  she  slowly  ties  up  to  it. 

Night  comes  on,  but  the  woods  are  as 
light  as  day  with  electric  lights.  Rustic 
houses  of  artistic  design  are  on  every 
hand.  Here,  where  it  was  thought  apples 
could  not  be  raised  because  of  mice  and 
deep  snow,  is  a  great  Western  Chautauqua. 

Eighty  thousand  people  are  pushing 
forward  into  the  northern  counties  of  this 
great  State.  Roads,  bridges,  schoolhouses, 
—  all  are  building.  Most  of  the  settlers 
are  poor,  sometimes  having  to  leave  part 
of  their  furniture  to  pay  freight.  They  are 
from  all  quarters  of  our  own  and  other 
lands.  Here  spring  up  great  mill  towns, 
mining  towns,  and  county  seats;  and  here, 
too,  our  minute-man  comes.  What  can  he 
do  ?  Nearly  all  the  people  are  here  to 
make  money.  He  has  neither  church,  par- 
sonage, nor  a  membership  to  start  with. 
Here  he  finds  towns  with  twenty  saloons 
in  a  block,  opera  house  and  electric  plants, 
dog-fights,  men-fights,  no  Sabbath  but 


26         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

an    extra    day   for    amusements    and    de- 
bauchery. 

The  minute-man  is  ready  for  any  emer- 
gency; he  takes  chances  that  would  appall 
a  town  minister.  He  finds  a  town  without 
a  single  house  that  is  a  home ;  he  has 
missed  his  train  at  a  funeral.  It  is  too 
cold  to  sleep  in  the  woods,  and  so  he 
walks  the  streets. 

A  saloon-keeper  sees  him.  "  Hello, 
Elder !  Did  ye  miss  yer  train  ?  Kind 
o'  tough,  eh?"  with  a  laugh.  ''Well, 
ye  ken  sleep  in  the  saloon  if  ye  ken* 
stand  it."  And  so  down  on  the  floor 
he  goes,  comforting  himself  with  the 
text,  "  Though  I  make  my  bed  in  hell, 
behold,  thou  art  there." 

Another  minute-man  in  another  part 
of  the  country  finds  a  town  given  up 
to  wickedness.  He  gets  his  frugal  lunch 
in  a  saloon,  the  only  place  for  him. 

"Are  you  a  preacher?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Thought  so.     You  want  to  preach  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  where  I  can  get  a  hall." 


MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER.         2/ 

"  Oh,  stranger,  I'll  give  ye  my  dance- 
hall  ;  jest  the  thing,  and  I  tell  ye  we 
need  preaching  here  bad." 

"  Good  ;   I  will  preach." 

The  saloon  man  stretches  a  large 
piece  of  cotton  across  his  bar,  and 
writes,  — 

"  Divine  service  in  this  place  from 
ten  A.  M.  to  twelve  to-morrow.  No 
drinks  served  during  service." 

It  is  a  strange  crowd:  there -are  uni- 
versity men,  and  men  who  never  saw 
a  school.  With  some  little  trembling 
the  minute-man  begins,  and  as  he  speaks 
he  feels  more  freedom  and  courage. 
At  the  conclusion  the  host  seizes  his 
big  hat,  and  with  a  revolver  commences 
to  take  up  a  collection,  remarking  that 
they  had  had  some  pretty  straight  slug- 
ging. On  the  back  seats  are  a  number 
of  what  are  called  five-cent-ante  men ; 
and  as  they  drop  in  small  coin,  he 
says,  — 

"  Come,  boys,  ye  have  got  to  straddle 
that." 


28        MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

He  brings  the  hat  to  the  parson,  and 
empties  a  large  collection  on  the  table. 

"  But  what  can  I  do  with  these 
colored  things  ?  " 

"  Why,  pard,  them's  chips ;  every  one 
redeemable  at  the  bar  in  gold." 

Sometimes  the  minute-man  has  a 
harder  time.  A  scholarly  man  who  now 
holds  a  high  position  in  New  England 
was  a  short  time  since  in  a  mountain 
town  where  he  preached  in  the  morning 
to  a  few  people  in  an  empty  saloon, 
and  announced  that  there  would  be  ser- 
vice in  the  same  place  in  the  evening. 
But  he  reckoned  without  his  host.  By 
evening  it  was  a  saloon  again  in  full 
blast.  Nothing  daunted,  he  began  outside. 

The  men  lighted  a  tar-barrel,  and  be- 
gan to  raffle  off  a  mule.  Just  then  a 
noted  bravo  of  the  camps  came  down ; 
and  quick  as  a  flash  his  shooting-irons 
were  out,  and  with  a  voice  like  a  lion 
he  said,  — 

"  Boys,  I  drop  the  first  one  that  inter- 
feres with  this  service." 


MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER.         2Q 

Thus  under  guard  from  unexpected 
quarters,  the  preacher  spoke  to  a  number 
of  men  who  had  been  former  church- 
members  in  the  far  East. 

Often  these  minute-men  must  build 
their  own  houses,  and  live  in  such  a 
rough  society  that  wife  and  children 
must  stay  behind  for  some  years.  One 
minute-man  built  a  little  hut  the  roof 
of  which  was  shingled  with  oyster-cans. 
His  room  was  so  small  that  he  could 
pour  out  his  coffee  at  the  table,  and 
without  getting  up  turn  his  flapjacks 
on  the  stove.  A  travelling  missionary 
visiting  him,  asked  him  where  he  slept. 
He  opened  a  little  trap-door  in  the  ceil- 
ing ;  and  as  the  good  woman  peered 
in  she  said,  — 

"Why,  you  can't  stand  up  in  that 
place  !  " 

"  Bless  your  soul,  madam,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "  a  home  missionary  doesn't  sleep 
standing  up." 

Strapping  a  bundle  of  books  on  his 
shoulders,  this  minute-man  starts  out 


30         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

on  a  mule-trail.  If  he  meets  the  train, 
he  must  step  off  and  climb  back.  He 
reaches  the  distant  camp,  and  finds  the 
boys  by  the  dozen  gambling  in  an  im- 
mense saloon.  He  steps  up  to  the  bar 
and  requests  the  liberty  of  singing  a 
few  hymns.  The  man  answers  surlily, — 

"  Ye  ken  if  ye  like,  but  the  boys 
won't  stand  it." 

The  next  minute  a  rich  baritone  be- 
gins, "  What  a  friend  we  have  in  Jesus," 
and  twenty  heads  are  lifted.  He  then 
says,  — 

"  Boys,  take  a  hand  ;  here  are  some 
books."  And  in  less  than  ten  minutes 
he  has  a  male  choir  of  many  voices. 
One  says,  '"  Pard,  sing  number  so  and 
so  ; "  and  another,  "  Sing  number  so  and 
so."  By  this  time  the  saloon-keeper  is 
growling ;  but  it  is  of  no  use  ;  the 
minister  has  the  boys,  and  starts  his 
work. 

In  some  camps  a  very  different  recep- 
tion awaits  him,  as,  for  instance,  the 
following :  At  his  appearance  a  wild- 


MINUTE— MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER.         31 

looking  Buffalo- Bill  type  of  man  greeted 
him  with  an  oath  and  a  pistol  levelled, 
at  him. 

"  Don't  yer  know  thar's  no  luck  in 
camp  with  a  preacher?  We  are  going 
to  kill  ye." 

"  Don't  you  know,"  said  the  minute- 
man,  "  a  minister  can  draw  a  bead  as 
quick  as  any  man  ? "  The  boys  gave 
a  loud  laugh,  for  they  love  grit,  and  the 
rough  slunk  away.  But  a  harder  trial 
followed. 

"  Glad  to  see  ye,  pard  ;  but  ye'll  have 
to  set  'em  up  'fore  ye  commence  —  rule 
of  the  camp,  ye  know."  But  before  our 
man  could  frame  an  answer,  the  hard- 
est drinker  in  the  crowd  said,  - 

"  Boys,  he  is  the  fust  minister  as  has 
had  the  sand  to  come  up  here,  and  I'll 
stand  treat  for  him." 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  add  that  the 
man  who  did  this  is  to-day  a  Christian. 

One  man  is  found  on  our  grand 
round,  living  with  a  wife  and  a  large 
family  in  a  church.  The  church  build- 


32         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

ing  had  been  too  cold  to  worship  in, 
and  so  they  gave  it  to  him  for  a  par- 
sonage. The  man  had  his  study  in  the 
belfry,  and  had  to  tack  a  carpet  up  to 
keep  his  papers  from  blowing  into  the 
lake.  This  man's  life  was  in  constant 
jeopardy,  and  he  always  carried  two 
large  revolvers.  He  had  been  the  cause 
of  breaking  up  the  stockade  dens  of  the 
town,  and  ruffians  were  hired  to  kill 
him.  He  seemed  to  wear  a  charmed 
life — but  then,  he  was  over  six  feet 
high,  and  weighed  more  than  two  hun- 
dred pounds.  Some  of  the  facts  that 
this  man  could  narrate  are  unreport- 
able. 

The  lives  lost  on  our  frontiers  to-day 
through  sin  in  all  its  forms  are  legion, 
and  no  man  realizes  as  well  as  the 
home  missionary  what  it  costs  to  build 
a  new  country ;  on  the  other  hand,  no 
man  has  such  an  opportunity  to  see  the 
growth  of  the  kingdom. 

There  died  in  Beloit,  recently,  the  Rev. 
Jeremiah  Porter,  a  man  who  had  been  a 


MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER.        33 

home  missionary.  His  field  was  at  Fort 
Brady  before  Chicago  had  its  name.  His 
church  was  largely  composed  of  soldiers ; 
and  when  the  men  were  ordered  to  Fort 
Dearborn,  he  went  with  them,  and  or- 
ganized what  is  now  known  as  the  First 
Presbyterian  Church  of  Chicago.  This 
minute-man  lived  to  see  Chicago  one 
million  two  hundred  thousand  strong. 

We  should  have  lost  the  whole  Pacific 
slope  but  for  our  minute-man,  the  glorious 
and  heroic  Whitman,  who  not  only  carried 
his  wagon  over  the  Rockies,  but  came 
back  through  stern  winter  and  past  hos- 
tile savages,  and  by  hard  reasoning  with 
Webster  and  others  secured  that  vast  pos- 
session for  us.  As  a  nation  we  owe  a  debt 
we  can  never  repay  to  the  soldiers  of  the 
cross  at  the  front,  who  have  endured  (and 
endure  to-day)  hardships  of  every  kind. 
They  are  cut  off  from  the  society  which 
they  love ;  often  they  live  in  dugouts, 
sometimes  in  rooms  over  a  saloon  ;  going 
weeks  without  fresh  meat,  sometimes  suf- 
fering from  hunger,  and  for  a  long  time 


34        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

without  a  cent  in  the  house.  Yet  who 
ever  heard  them  complain  ?  Their  great 
grief  is  that  fields  lie  near  to  them  white 
for  the  harvest,  while,  with  hands  already 
full,  they  can  only  pray  the  Lord  of  the 
harvest  to  send  forth  more  laborers. 

Often  there  is  but  one  man  preaching 
in  a  county  which  is  larger  than  Massa- 
chusetts. He  is  cut  off  from  libraries, 
ministers'  meetings,  and  to  a  large  extent 
from  the  sympathies  of  more  fortunate 
brethren,  and  is  often  unable  to  send  his 
children  to  college.  These  men  still  stand 
their  ground  until  they  die,  ofttimes  un- 
known, but  leaving  foundations  for  others 
to  build  on. 

One  place  visited  by  a  general  mission- 
ary was  so  full  of  reckless  men  that  the 
station-agent  always  carried  a  revolver 
from  his  house  to  -the  railway  station.  A 
vile  variety  show,  carried  on  by  abandoned 
women,  was  kept  open  day  and  night. 
Sunday  was  the  noisiest  day  of  all.  Yet 
in  this  place  a  church  was  formed  ;  and 
many  men  and  women,  having  found  a 


MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER.         35 

leader,  were  ready  to  take  a  stand  for  the 
right. 

I  am  not  writing  of  the  past ;  for  all 
the  conditions  that  I  have  spoken  of  exist 
in  hundreds,  yes,  thousands,  of  places  all 
over  the  land.  One  need  not  go  to  the 
far  West  to  find  them  ;  they  exist  in  every 
State  qf  the  Union,  only  varying  in  their 
types  of  sin. 

Visiting  a  home  missionary  in  a  min- 
ing region  within  two  hours'  ride  of  the 
capital,  in  a  State  not  four  hundred  miles 
from  the  Atlantic,  I  found  the  man  in 
one  of  the  most  desolate  towns  I  ever 
saw.  The  most  prosperous  families  were 
earning  on  an  average  five  dollars  a 
week,  store  pay.  All  were  in  debt. 
When  the  missionary  announced  his  in- 
tention of  going  there,  he  was  warned 
that  it  was  not  safe ;  but  that  did  not 
alter  his  plans. 

The  first  service  was  held  in  a  school- 
house,  the  door  panels  of  which  were  out 
and  not  a  pane  of  glass  unbroken.  A 
roaring  torrent  had  to'  be  passed  on  an 


36        MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

unsteady  plank  bridge,  over  which  the 
women  and  children  crawled  on  hands 
and  knees.  It  was  dark  when  they  came. 
The  preacher  could  see  the  gleam  of  the 
men's  eyes  from  their  grimy  faces  as  the 
lanterns  flickered  in  the  draughts.  He 
began  to  preach.  Soonx  white  streaks 
were  on  the  men's  cheeks,  as  tears  from 
eyes  unused  to  weeping  rolled  down  those 
black  faces.  At  the  close  a  church  was 
organized,  a  reading-room  was  added, 
and  many  a  boy  was  saved  from  the 
saloon  by  it.  Yet,  strange  to  say,  al- 
though the  owners  (church  members  too) 
had  cleared  a  million  out  of  those  mines, 
the  money  to  build  the  needed  church 
and  parsonage  had  to  be  sent  from  the 
extreme  East. 

Hundreds  of  miles  eastward  I  have 
found  men  living,  sixty  and  seventy  in 
number,  in  a  long  hut,  their  food  cooked 
in  a  great  pot,  out  of  which  they  dipped 
their  meals  with  a  tin  dipper.  No  less 
than  seventy-five  thousand  Slovaks  live 
in  this  one  State,  and  their  only  spiritual 


WORK  IN   THE    NEW   COMMUNITY.         37 

counsel  comes  from  a  few  Bible-readers. 
Ought  we  not  then,  as  Christians,  to  help 
those  already  there,  and  give  of  our 
plenty  to  send  the  men  needed  to  carry 
the  light  to  thousands  of  places  that  as 
yet  sit  in  the  darkness  and  the  shadow  ? 

HOW    THE     HOME     MISSIONARY    BEGINS    WORK 
IN    THE    NEW    COMMUNITY. 

First,  pastoral  visiting  is  absolutely  ne- 
cessary to  success.  The  feelings  of  new- 
comers are  tender  after  breaking  the  home 
ties  and  getting  to  the  new  home,  and 
a  visit  from  the  pastor  is  sure  to  bring 
satisfactory  results.  Sickness  and  death 
offer  him  opportunities  for  doing  much 
good,  especially  among  the  poor,  and 
they  are  always  the  most  numerous. 

Some  very  pathetic  cases  come  under 
every  missionary's  observation.  Once  a 
man  called  at  the  parsonage  and  asked  for 
the  elder,  saying  that  a  man  had  been 
killed  some  miles  away  in  the  woods,  and 
the  family  wanted  the  missionary  to  preach 


38         MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE   FRONTIER. 

the  funeral  sermon.  The  next  morning 
a  ragged  boy  came  to  pilot  the  minister. 
The  way  led  through  virgin  forests  and 
black-ash  swamps.  A  light  snow  covered 
the  ground  and  made  travelling  difficult, 
as  much  of  the  way  was  blocked  by  fallen 
trees.  After  two  hours'  walking  the  house 
was  reached ;  and  here  was  the  widow  with 
her  large  family,  most  of  them  in  borrowed 
clothes,  the  supervisor,  a  few  rough  men, 
and  a  county  coffin. 

The  minister  hardly  knew  what  to  say  ; 
but  remembering  that  that  morning  a 
large  box  had  been  sent  containing  a 
number  of  useful  articles,  he  made  God's 
providence  his  theme.  A  few  days  after; 
the  box  was  taken  to  the  widow's  home. 
When  they  reached  the  shanty  they  found 
two  little  bunks  inside.  Her  only  stove 
was  an  oven  taken  from  an  old-fashioned 
cook-stove.  The  oven  stood  on  a  dry- 
goods  box. 

The  missionary  said,  "  Why,  my  poor 
woman,  you  will  freeze  with  this  wretched 
fire." 


WORK  IN    THE   NEW  COMMUNITY.          39 

"  No,"  she  said ;  "it  ain't  much  for 
cooking  and  washing,  but  it's  a  good  little 
heater." 

A  few  white  beans  and  small  potatoes 
were  all  her  store,  with  winter  coming  on 
apace.  When  she  saw  the  good  things 
for  eating  and  wearing  that  had  been 
brought  to  her,  she  sobbed  out  her 
thanks. 

In  the  busy  life  of  a  missionary  the 
event  was  soon  forgotten,  until  one  day 
a  woman  said,  "  Elder,  do  you  recollect 
that  'ar  Mrs.  Sisco?" 

"Yes." 

<l  She  is  down  with  a  fever,  and  so  are 
her  children." 

At  this  news  the  minister  started  with 
the  doctor  to  see  her.  As  they  neared 
the  place  he  noticed  *some  red  streaks 
gleaming  in  the  woods,  and  asked  what 
they  were. 

"  Oh,"  said  the  doctor,  "  that  is  from  the 
widow's  house.     She  had  to  move  into  a 
stable  of  the  deserted  lumber  camp." 
The    chinks    had    fallen   out  from    the 


40         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

logs,  and  hence  the  gleam  of  fire.  The 
house  was  a  study  in  shadows  —  the  floor 
sticky  with  mud  brought  in  with  the  snow  ; 
the  debris  of  a  dozen  meals  on  the  table  ; 
a  lamp,  without  chimney  or  bottom,  stuck 
into  an  old  tomato-can,  gave  its  flickering 
light,  and  revealed  the  poor  woman,  with 
nothing  to  shield  her  from  the  storm  but 
a  few  paper  flour-sacks  tacked  back  of  the 
bed.  Two  or  three  chairs,  the  children  in 
the  other  bed,  the  baby  in  a  little  soap- 
box on  rockers,  were  all  the  wretched 
hovel  contained.  Medicine  was  left  her, 
and  the  minister's  watch  for  her  to  time  it. 
He  exchanged  his  watch  for  a  clock  the 
next  day.  By  great  persuasion  the  proper 
authorities  were  made  to  put  her  in  the 
poorhouse,  and  she  was  lost  to  sight ;  but 
there  was  a  bright  ending  in  her  case. 

About  a  year  after,  a  rosy-faced  woman 
called  at  the  parsonage.  The  pastor  said, 
"  Come  in  and  have  some  dinner." 

"  I  got  some  one  waiting,"  she  said. 

"  Why,  who  is  that?" 

"  My  new  man." 


WORK  IN   THE   NEW  COMMUNITY.         41 

"  What,  you  married  again  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  and  we  are  just  going-  after 
the  rest  of  the  traps  up  at  the  shanty,  and 
I  called  to  see  whether  you  would  give  me 
the  little  clock  for  a  keepsake  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes." 

Away  she  went  as  happy  as  a  lark. 
Less  than  two  years  from  the  time  she  was 
left  a  widow,  a  rich  old  uncle  found  in  her 
his  long-lost  niece-,  and  the  woman  became 
heiress  to  thousands  of  dollars. 

Sometimes  dreadful  scenes  are  wit- 
nessed at  funerals  where  strong  drink  has 
suddenly  finished  the  career  of  father  or 
mother.  At  the  funeral  of  a  little  child 
smothered  by  a  drunken  father,  the 
mother  was  too  sick  to  be  up  at  the  fu- 
neral, the  father  too  drunk  to  realize  what 
was  taking  place,  and  twice  the  service 
was  stopped  by  drunken  men.  At  an- 
other funeral  a  dog-fight  began  under  the 
coffin.  The  missionary  kicked  the  dogs 
out,  and  resumed  as  well  as  he  could. 

At  another  wretched  home  the  woman 
was  found  dying,  the  husband  drunk,  no 


42         MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE  FRONTIER. 

food,  mercury  ten  degrees  below  zero,  and 
the  little  children  nearly  perishing  with 
cold.  The  drunken  man  pulled  the  bed 
from  under  his  dying  wife  while  he  went 
to  sleep.  His  awakening  was  terrible,  and 
the  house  crowded  at  the  funeral  with 
morbid  hearers. 

In  one  town  visited,  a  county  town  at 
that,  the  roughs  had  buried  a  man  alive, 
leaving  his  head  above  ground,  and  then 
preached  a  mock  funeral  sermon,  remark- 
ing as  they  left  him,  "  How  natural  he 
looks  !  " 

As  the  nearest  minister  is  miles  away, 
the  missionary  has  to  travel  many  miles  in 
all  weathers  to  the  dying  and  dead.  Vis- 
iting the  sick,  and  sitting  up  with  those 
with  dangerous  diseases,  soon  cause  the 
worst  of  men  not  only  to  respect  but  to 
love  the  missionary ;  and  no  man  has  the 
moulding  of  a  community  so  much  in  his 
hands  as  the  courageous  and  faithful  ser- 
vant of  Christ.  The  first  missionary  on 
the  field  leaves  his  stamp  indelibly  fixed 
on  the  new  village.  Towns  left  without 


WORK  IN   THE   NEW  COMMUNITY.         43 

the  gospel  for  years  are  the  hardest  of  all 
places  in  which  to  get  a  footing.  Some 
towns  have  been  without  service  of  any 
kind  for  years,  and  some  of  the  young 
men  and  women  have  never  seen  a  minis- 
ter. There  are  townships  to-day,  even  in 
New  York  State,  without  a  church ;  and, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  there  are  more 
churchless  communities  in  Illinois  than  in 
any  other  State  in  the  Union.  Until  two 
years  ago  Black  Rock,  with  a  population 
of  five  thousand,  had  no  church  or  Sun- 
day-school. Meanwhile  such  is  the  con- 
dition of  the  Home  Missionary  Society's 
treasury  that  they  often  cannot  take  the 
students  who  offer  themselves,  and  the 
churchless  places  increase. 

All  kinds  of  people  crowd  to  the  front, 
—  those  who  are  stranded,  those  who  are 
trying  to  hide  from  justice,  men  speculat- 
ing. Gambling  dens  are  open  day  and 
night,  Sundays  of  course  included,  the 
men  running  them  being  relieved  as  reg- 
ularly as  guards  in  the  army. 

In  purely  agricultural  districts  a  differ- 


44         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

ent  type  is  met  with.  Many  are  so  poor 
that  the  men  have  to  go  to  the  lumber 
woods  part  of  the  year.  The  women  thus 
left  often  become  despondent,  and  a  very 
large  per  cent  in  the  insane  asylum  comes 
from  this  class. 

One  family  lived  so  far  from  town  that 
when  the  husband  died  they  were  obliged 
to  make  his  coffin,  and  utilized  two  flour- 
barrels  for  the  purpose. 

So  amid  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men, 
and  under  a  variety  of  circumstances,  the 
minute-man  lives,  works,  and  dies,  too 
often  forgotten  and  unsung,  but  remem- 
bered in  the  Book ;  and  when  God  shall 
make  up  his  jewels,  some  of  the  brightest 
gems  will  be  found  among  the  pioneers 
who  carried  the  ark  into  the  wilderness  in 
advance  of  the  roads,  breaking  through 
the  forest  guided  by  the  surveyor's  blaze 
on  the  trees. 

There  are  hundreds  of  people  who 
pierce  into  the  heart  of  the  country  by 
going  up  the  rivers  before  a  path  has 
been  made.  In  one  home  found  there, 


WORK  IN   THE  NEW  COMMUNITY.         45 

the  minute-man  had  the  bed  in  a  big  room 
down-stairs,  while  the  man,  with  his  wife 
and  nine  children,  went  up  steps  like  a 
stable-ladder,  and  slept  on  "  shakedowns," 
on  a  floor  supported  with  four  rafters  which 
threatened  to  come  down.  But  the  min- 
ute-man, too  tired  to  care,  slept  the  sleep 
of  the  just.  Often  not  so  fortunate  as 
then,  he  finds  a  large  family  and  but  one 
room.  Once  he  missed  his  way,  and  had 
to  crawl  into  two  empty  barrels  with  the 
ends  knocked  out.  Drawing  them  as 
close  together  as  he  could,  to  prevent 
draughts,  he  had  a  short  sleep,  and  awoke 
at  four  A.M.  to  find  that  a  house  and  bed 
were  but  twenty  rods  farther. 

In  a  new  village,  for  the  first  visit  all 
kinds  of  plans  are  made  to  draw  the  peo- 
ple out.  Here  is  one  :  The  minute-man 
calls  at  the  school,  and  asks  leave  to  draw 
on  the  blackboard.  Teacher  and  scholars 
are  delighted.  After  entertaining  them 
for  a  while,  he  says,  "  Children,  tell  your 
parents  that  the  man  who  chalk-talked 
to  you  will  preach  here  at  eight  o'clock." 


46         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

And  the  youngsters,  expecting  another 
such  good  time  as  they  have  just  enjoyed, 
come  out  in  force,  bringing  both  parents 
with  them.  The  village  is  but  two  years 
old.  At  first  the  people  had  the  drinking- 
water  brought  five  miles  in  barrels  on 
the  railroad,  and  for  washing  melted  the 
snow.  Then  they  took  maple  sap,  and 
at  last  birch  sap ;  but,  "  Law,"  said  a 
woman,  "it  was  dreadful  ironin'!" 

Here  was  a  genuine  pioneer :  his  house 
of  logs,  hinges  wood,  latch  ditto,  locks 
none  ;  a  black  bear,  three  squirrels,  a  tur- 
tle-dove, two  dogs,  and  a  coon  made  up 
his  earthly  possessions.  He  was  tired  of 
the  place. 

"Laws,  Elder!  when  I  fust  come  ye 
could  kill  a  deer  close  by,  and  ketch  a 
string  of  trout  off  the  doorsteps ;  but 
everything's  sp'iled.  Men  beginning  to 
wear  b'iled  shirts,  and  I  can't  stand  it. 
I  shall  clear  as  soon  as  I  can  git  out. 
Don't  want  to  buy  that  b'ar,  do  ye  ?  " 

In  this  little  town  a  grand  minute-man 
laid  down  his  life.  He  was  so  anxious  to 


A  TYPICAL  LOG  HOUSE. 


Page  46. 


WORK  IN   THE   NEW  COMMUNITY.         47 

get  the  church  paid  for,  that  he  would 
not  buy  an  overcoat.  Through  the  hard 
winter  he  often  fought  a  temperature 
forty  degrees  below  zero  ;  but  at  last  a 
severe  cold  ended  in  his  death.  His 
good  wife  sold  her  wedding-gown  to 
buy  an  overcoat,  but  all  too  late ;  and 
a  bride  of  a  twelvemonth  went  out  a 
widow  with  an  orphan  in  her  arms. 

Yet  the  children  of  God  are  said  to  add 
to  their  already  large  store  four  hundred 
million  dollars  yearly,  and  some  think  of 
building  a  ten-million-dollar  temple  to 
honor  God  —  while  temples  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  are  too  often  left  to  fall,  through 
utter  neglect,  because  we  withhold  the 
little  that  would  save  them.  We  shall 
never  conquer  the  heathen  world  for 
Christ  until  we  have  learned  the  way  to 
save  America.  Save  America,  and  we 
can  save  the  world. 


48         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

IV. 

THE    IMMIGRANT   ON   THE    FRONTIER. 

WHATEVER  may  be  the  effect  of  im- 
migrants in  cities,  the  immigrant  on  the 
frontier  has  sent  the  country  ahead  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  In  the  first  place, 
the  pioneer  immigrants  are  in  the  prime 
of  life.  They  generally  bring  enough 
money  to  make  a  start.  They  need 
houses,  tools,  horses,  and  all  the  things 
needful  to  start.  They  seldom  fail.  Used 
to  privation  at  home,  they  make  very 
hardy  settlers.  In  some  States  they 
comprise  seventy  per  cent  of  the  voters ; 
and  the  getting  of  a  piece  of  land  they 
can  call  their  own  makes  good  citizens 
of  them  sooner  than  any  other  way. 
You  can't  make  a  dangerous  kind  of  a 
man  of  him  who  can  call  a  quarter  sec- 
tion his  own. 

In  order  to  show  how  the  pioneer  settler 


THE   IMMIGRANT  ON   THE   FRONTIER.      49 

from  Europe  prospers,  let  us  begin  with 
him  at  the  wharf.  There  floats  the  levia- 
than that  has  a  whole  villageful  on  board, 
—  over  twelve  hundred.  They  are  on 
deck ;  and  a  motley  crowd  they  appear, 
for  they  are  from  all  lands.  Here  is  a 
girl  dressed  in  the  picturesque  costume 
of  Western  Europe,  and  here  a  man  with 
a  great  peak  to  his  hat,  an  enormous 
long  coat,  his  beard  half  way  down  his 
breast,  a  china  pipe  as  big  as  a  small 
teacup  in  his  mouth,  his  wife  like  a  bun- 
dle of  meal  tied  in  the  middle,  with 
immense  earrings,  and  an  old  colored 
handkerchief  over  her  head.  Behind 
them  a  half-dozen  little  ones  with  tow- 
heads  of  hair,  looking  as  shaggy  as 
Yorkshire  terriers,  blue-eyed  and  healthy. 
They  are  carrying  copper  coffee-pots  and 
kettles  ;  and  away  they  march,  eight  hun- 
dred of  them  and  more,  up  Broadway. 

Here  and  there  a  man  steps  into  a 
bakery,  and  comes  out  with  a  yard  of 
bread,  and  breaks  it  up  into  hunks ;  and 
the  little  children  grind  it  down  without 


50         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

butter,  with  teeth  that  are  clean  from  lack 
of  meat,  with  all  the  gusto  of  Sunday-school 
children  with  angel-cake  at  a  picnic.  They 
are  soon  locked  in  the  cars,  and  night 
comes  on.  Go  inside  and  you  will  see 
the  good  mother  slicing  up  bolognas  or 
a  Westphalia  ham,  and  handing  around 
slices  of  black  bread.  After  supper  read- 
ing of  the  Bible  and  prayers  ;  and  then  the 
little  ones  are  put  into  sack-like  night- 
gowns, and  put  up  in  the  top  bunks, 
where  they  lie,  watching  their  elders 
playing  cards,  until  they  fall  asleep. 

In  the  morning  you  go  up  to  one  of 
the  women  who  is 'washing  a  boy  and  ask, 
as  you  see  the  great  number  of  children 
around  her,  whether  they  are  all  hers :  she 
courtesies  and  says,  "  Me  no  spik  Inglish;" 
but  by  pantomime  you  make  her  under- 
stand, and  she  laughingly  says,  "  Yah, 
yah  ;  "  and  you  think  of  Russell's  song,  — 

"  To  the  West,  to  the  West,  to  the  land  of  the  free, 
Where  Mighty  Missouri  rolls  down  to  the  sea ; 
Where  a  man  is  a  man,  if  he's  willing  to  toil, 
And  the  humblest  may  gather  the  fruits  of  the  soil. 


THE   IMMIGRANT  ON   THE    FRONTIER.      5  I 

Where  children  are  blessings,  and  he  who  has  most, 
Has  aid  for  his  fortune,  and  riches  to  boast ; 
Where  the  young  may  exult  and  the  aged  may  rest  — 
Away,  far  away,  to  the  land  of  the  West ! " 

Their  train  is  a  slow  one  ;  it  is  side- 
tracked for  the  great  fliers  as  they  reach 
a  single-track  road. 

The  very  cattle-trains  have  precedence  of 
them.  We  watch  their  train  as  it  reaches 
the  great  brown  prairie ;  a  little  black 
shack  or  two  is  all  you  can  see.  The 
very  tumble-weeds  outstrip  their  slow- 
moving  train ;  but  after  many  weary  hours 
they  reach  the  end  of  the  road,  so  far  as 
it  is  built  that  day ;  it  will  go  three  miles 
farther  to-morrow.  As  yet  there  are  no 
freight-sheds,  and  they  camp  out  on  the 
prairie.  The  cold  stars  come  out,  the  coy- 
otes' sharp  bark  is  heard  in  the  distance, 
blended  with  the  howl  of  the  prairie  wolf. 
Some  of  them  dig  holes  in  the  side-hill, 
and  put  their  little  ones  in  them  for  the 
night.  Tears  come  into  the  eyes  of  the 
mothers  as  they  think  of  home  and  rela- 
tives beyond  the  seas. 


52         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

And  there  we  will  leave  them  for  twelve 
years,  and  then  on  one  of  our  transconti- 
nental palaces  on  wheels  we  will  follow  the 
immigrant  trail.  Where  they  passed  black 
ash-swamps  and  marshes  and  scattered 
homes,  we  go  through  villages  with  public 
libraries ;  where  they  touched  the  brown 
prairie,  we  view  a  sea  of  living  green ; 
where  they  took  five  days,  we  go  in  two ; 
where  they  stepped  off  at  the  end  of  the 
road,  we  stop  at  a  junction  whose  steel 
rails  run  on  to  the  Pacific  or  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  ;  where  they  made  the  shelter  for 
their  little  ones  in  the  ground,  we  find  a 
good  hotel,  a  city  alive  to  the  finger-tips, 
electric  cars  on  the  streets,  an  opera-house, 
and  a  high  school  just  about  to  keep  its 
commencement.  On  the  street  we  notice 
some  people  that  appear  somewhat  fa- 
miliar, but  we  are  not  sure.  When  we 
spoke  to  them  twelve  years  ago  they  said 
with  a  courtesy,  "Me  no  spik  Inglish;" 
but  now  without  a  courtesy  they  talk  in 
broken  English.  The  man  has  lost  his 
big  beard,  his  clothes  are  well-made ;  the 


THE   IMMIGRANT  ON   THE    FRONTIER.      53 

wife  is  no  longer  like  a  bag  of  meal  with 
a  string  around  it.  No  ;  with  a  daily  hint 
from  Paris,  she  has  all  the  feathers  the 
law  allows. 

They  are  making  for  the  high  school- 
house,  and  we  follow  them.  A  chorus  of 
fifty  voices,  with  a  grand  piano  accompani- 
ment, is  in  progress  as  we  take  our  seats, 
after  which  a  boy  stands  forth  and  de- 
claims his  piece.  We  should  never  know 
him.  It  is  one  of  our  tow-headed  young- 
sters from  the  wharf.  The  old  father 
sits  with  tears  of  joy  running  down  his 
wrinkled  face.  He  can  hardly  believe  his 
senses.  He  remembers  wh'en  his  grandsire 
was  a  serf  under  Nicholas,  and  it  seems 
too  good  to  be  true.  But  he  hears  the 
neighing  of  his  percherons  under  the  little 
church-shed  ;  and  by  association  of  ideas 
his  fields  and  waving  grain,  his  flocks, 
herds,  and  quarter  section,  rise  before  his 
mind's  view,  and  he  opens  his  eyes  to  see 
his  favorite  daughter  step  on  the  platform 
dressed  in  white,  and  great  June  roses 
drooping  on  her  breast ;  and  the  old  man's 


54        MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

eyes  sparkle  as  his  daughter  steps  down 
amid  a  round  of  applause  as  she  says  in 
the  very  spirit  of  old  Cromwell,  "  Curfew 
shall  not  ring  to-night." 

And  this  is  real.  It  has  been  going 
on  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  States 
with  whole  counties  rilled  with  Russians 
voting,  and  being  the  banner  counties  to 
have  prohibition  in  the  State's  Constitu- 
tion ;  or,  like  North  Dakota,  with  nearly 
seventy  per  cent  foreign  voters,  driving 
the  lottery  from  them  when  needing  money 
sorely.  Men  and  women  who  could 
scarcely  speak  the  English  language  living 
to  see  their  sons*  senators  and  governors. 

All  the  dismal  prophecies  about  ruin 
from  the  immigrant  are  disproved  as 
one  looks  over  Wisconsin,  Minnesota, 
and  the  Dakotas  to-day ;  and  instead 
of  having  a  great  German  nation  on  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  as  one  writer  pre- 
dicted, we  have  in  the  great  agricultural 
States  some  of  our  stanchest  American 
citizens. 

One  of  the  mightiest  factors  in  human 


THE   IMMIGRANT   ON   THE   FRONTIER.     55 

life  to-day  is  the  language  we  use.  Three 
centuries  ago  there  were  about  6,000,000 
using  it;  to-day  125,000,000  speak  the 
English  tongue.  The  Duke  of  Argyle 
was  once  asked  which  was  the  best  lan- 
guage. He  said,  "  If  I  want  to  be 
polite  I  use  the  French,  if  I  want  to 
be  understood  I  take  the  English,  if 
I  want  to  praise  my  Maker  I  take  the 
Gaelic,  my  mother-tongue."  Foreigners 
coming  here  think  in  their  own  lan- 
guage, even  though  they  may  be  able  to 
speak  in  ours  ;  gradually  they  come  to 
think  in  English,  but  still  they  dream  in 
their  mother-tongue  ;  at  last  they  dream, 
think,  and  speak  in  the  language  of  the 
land,  and  become  homogeneous  with  the 
nation. 

God's  greatest  gift  to  this  New  World 
is  the  foreigner.  The  thought  came  to 
me  while  on  my  way  to  Savannah :  Why 
did  not  the  discoverers  of  the  West- 
ern Hemisphere  find  a  higher  civilization 
than  the  one  they  left  ?  Why  should 
God  have  kept  so  large  a  portion  of  the 


56  MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

world  hidden  from  the  eyes  of  Europe 
for  thousands  of  years  ?  Had  he  not 
some  grand  design  that  in  the  fulness 
of  time  he  would  lead  Columbus,  like 
Abraham  of  old,  to  found  a  new  nation? 
Take  your  map  and  find  those  States 
which  the  stream  of  immigration  has 
passed  by,  and  in  every  case  you  find 
them  behind  the  times.  Strange  how 
prejudice  warps  our  vision !  Jefferson 
said,  "  Would  to  God  the  Atlantic  were 
a  sea  of  flame;"  and  Washington  said, 
"  I  would  we  were  well  rid  of  them,  ex- 
cept Lafayette."  Strange  words  for  a 
man  who  would  not  have  been  an  Ameri- 
can had  his  ancestors  not  been  im- 
migrants. Hamilton,  the  great  statesman, 
was  an  immigrant.  Albert  Gallatin  the 
financier,  Agassiz  the  scientist,  and  thou- 
sands of  illustrious  names,  make  a  strong 
list.  One-twelfth  of  the  land  foreign- 
ers !  —  but  one-fourth  of  the  Union  armies 
were  foreigners  too. 


WHAT    THEY  BECOME.  $? 


WHAT   THEY    BECOME. 

When  Linnaeus  was  under  gardener,  the 
head  gardener  had  a  flower  he  could  not 
raise.  He  gave  it  to  Linnaeus,  who  took 
it  to  the  back  of  a  pine,  placed  broken 
ice  around  it,  and  gave  it  a  northern 
exposure.  In  a  few  days  the  king  with 
delight  asked  for  the  name  of  the  beau- 
tiful gem.  It  was  the  Forsaken  Flower. 

So  there  are  millions  of  our  fellow-men 
in  Europe  to-day,  in  a  harsh  environment, 
sickly,  poor,  and  ready  to  die  ;  but  when 
they  are  transplanted,  they  find  a  new 
home,  clothes,  food,  and,  above  all,  the 
freedom  that  makes  our  land  the  very 
paradise  for  the  poor  of  all  lands.  These 
immigrants  have  made  the  brown  prairie 
to  blossom  as  the  rose,  the  wilderness  to 
become  like  the  garden  of  the  Lord.  They 
drove  the  Louisiana  Lottery  out  of  North 
Dakota ;  they  voted  for  temperance  in 
South  Dakota.  Their  hearts  beat  warm 
for  their  native  land,  but  they  are  true 
to  their  adopted  country. 


58         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

The  mixture  of  the  nationalities  is  the 
very  thing  that  makes  us  foremost :  it  has 
produced  a  new  type  ;  and  if  we  but  do 
our  duty  we  shall  be  the  arbitrator  of  the 
nations.  There  is  no  way  to  lift  Europe 
so  fast  as  to  evangelize  her  sons  who  comeT 
to  us.  Sixteen  per  cent  go  home  to  live, 
and  these  can  never  forget  what  they  saw 
here ;  did  we  but  teach  them  aright,  they 
would  be  an  army  of  foreign  missionaries, 
fifty  thousand  strong,  preachers  of  the 
gospel  to  the  people  in  the  tongue  in 
which  they  were  born,  and  thus  creating 
a  perpetual  Pentecost. 

One  other  great  fact  needs  pointing  out. 
The  discovery  of  this  land  was  by  the 
Latin  races  ;  and  yet  they  failed  to  hold 
it,  lacking  the  genius  for  colonization  for 
which  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  pre-eminent. 
During  the  last  fifty  years,  over  13,000,- 
ooo  immigrants  have  come  to  this  land. 
Great  Britain  sent  nearly  6,000,000 ;  Ger- 
many, 4,500,000  ;  Norway  and  Sweden, 
939,603  ;  Denmark,  144,858  ;  the  Nether- 
lands, 99,522  ;  Belgium,  42,102.  Here  we 


WHAT   THEY  BECOME.  59 

have  over  11,000,000  Anglo-Saxon,  Teu- 
tonic, and  Scandinavian,  of  the  13,000,000, 
and  almost  half  of  them  speaking  English, 
while  Italy,  Russia,  Poland,  France,  Aus- 
tria, Switzerland,  Hungary,  Spain,  Portugal, 
and  all  other  nations  sent  but  1,708,897 
out  of  the  13,296,157.  And  we  must  note 
also  that  nearly  all  of  the  Latin  races  came 
within  the  last  few  years ;  so  that  we  were 
a  nation  50,000,000  strong  before  many  of 
them  came,  and  eighty  per  cent  of  all  our 
people  speak  English. 

No  nation  ever  drove  out  its  people  with- 
out loss,  as  witness  Spain  and  France  with 
their  Protestants  and  Huguenots.  Eng- 
land took  them,  and  they  helped  to  make 
her  great.  Often  when  a  nation  has  actu- 
ally been  conquered  in  war,  she  in  turn 
conquers  her  victors  and  is  made  better. 
Germany  conquered  Rome  ;  but  Roman 
laws  and  Roman  government  conquered 
the  invaders,  and  made  Germany  the  mother 
of  modern  civilization.  Norsemen,  Danes, 
and  Saxons  invaded  Britain,  and  drenched 
her  fields  in  blood.  The  Normans  brought 


60         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

their  beef,  their  mutton,  and  their  pork,  but 
the  English  kept  their  oxen,  sheep,  and 
swine ;  and  eventually  from  the  Norman, 
Dane,  and  others  came  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  England  has  four  times  as  much  in- 
ventive genius  as  the  rest  of  Europe,  but 
America  has  ten  times  as  much  as  Eng- 
land ;  and  why  ?  Because  added  to  the 
English  colony  is  all  Europe  ;  and  in  our 
own  people  we  have  the  practical  English- 
man, the  thoughtful  German,  the  meta- 
physical Scot,  the  quick-witted  Irishman, 
the  sprightly  Gaul,  the  musical  and  artistic 
Italian,  the  hardy  Swiss,  the  frugal  and 
clear-headed  Swede  and  Norwegian  ;  and 
all  united  make  the  type  which  the  world 
will  yet  come  to,  the  manhood  which  will 
recognize  the  inherent  nobility  of  the  race, 
its  brotherhood,  and  the  great  God,  Father. 


THE    ODDITIES   OF   THE   FRONTIER.       6 1 


V. 

THE    ODDITIES    OF   THE    FRONTIER. 

As  the  waves  of  the  sea  cast  up  all  sorts 
of  things,  so  the  waves  of  humanity  that 
flood  the  frontiers  cast  up  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men.  To  go  into  a  sod 
house  and  find  a  theological  library  be- 
longing to  the  early  part  of  the  century, 
or  to  hear  coming  up  through  the  ground 
a  composition  by  Beethoven  played  on  a 
piano,  is  a  startling  experience ;  so  are 
some  of  the  questions  and  assertions  that 
one  hears  in  a  frontier  Sunday-school. 

I  remember  one  old  man  who  was  in 
class  when  we  were  studying  that  part  of 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  where  the  dis- 
ciples said,  "It  is  not  reason  that  we 
should  leave  the  word  of  God  and  serve 
tables;"  the  old  fellow  said,  " -I  have  an 
idee  that  them  tables  was  the  two  tables 
of  stone  that  Moses  brought  down  from 


62  MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

the  Mount."  This  was  a  stunner.  I 
thought  afterwards  that  the  old  man  had 
an  idea  that  they  were  to  leave  the  law 
and  stick  to  the  gospel ;  but  still  it  did 
not  seem  right  to  pick  out  men  to  serve 
the  tables  if  that  was  what  he  meant. 

Another  would  be  satisfied  with  nothing 
but  the  literal  meaning  of  everything  he 
read.  So  when  I  explained  to  the  class 
the  modern  idea  of  the  Red  Sea  being 
driven  by  the  wind  so  as  to  leave  a  road 
for  light-laden  people  to  walk  over,  the 
old  man  was  up  in  arms  at  once,  "  Why," 
said  he,  "  it  says  a  wall  ;  "  and  no  doubt 
the  pictures  which  he  had  seen  in  his 
youth,  of  the  children  of  Israel  walking 
with  bottle-green  waters  straight  as  two 
walls  on  either  side,  and  the  reading  of 
a  celebrated  preacher's  sermon,  where  it 
spoke  of  the  fish  coming  up  to  peep  at 
the  little  children,  as  if  they  would  like  a 
nibble,  confirmed  the  old  man  in  his  views. 

In  vain  I  told  him  that  a  wind  that 
would  hold  up  such  a  vast  mass  of  water 
would  blow  the  Israelites  out  of  their 


THE   ODDITIES    OF   THE   FRONTIER.        63 

clothes  ;  still  he  stuck  to  his  position  until 
I  asked  him  whether,  when  Nabal's  men 
told  him  that  David's  men  had  been  a 
wall  unto  them  day  and  night,  he  thought 
that  David  had  plastered  them  together  ? 

He  said,  "  No  ;  it  meant  a  defence/'  and 
apparently  gave  in,  but  muttered,  "  It  says 
a  wall,  anyway." 

Another  man  told  me  that  if  a  man  cut 
himself  in  the  woods,  there  was  a  verse 
in  the  Bible  so  that  if  he  turned  to  it  and 
put  his  ringer  upon  it,  the  blood  would 
at  once  stop  running ;  and  he  wanted  to 
know  whether  I  knew  where  to  find  it.  I 
told  him  I  was  very  sorry  that  I  did 
not  know. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  may  find  a 
man  with  a  Greek  Testament,  and  well  up 
in  Greek,  making  his  comments  from 
the  original.  Here  a  Barclay  &  Perkins 
brewer  from  London,  who  has  plunged 
into  the  woods  to  get  rid  of  drink,  and 
succeeded.  Here  a  family,  one  of  whom 
was  Dr.  Norman  McLeod's  nurse,  and  a 
playmate  of  the  family.  Another  informs 


64         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

you  he  preached  twenty-five  years,  "  till 
his  voice  give  out;  "  and  here  a  Hard-shell 
Baptist,  who  "  don't  believe  in  Sunday- 
schools  nohow." 

The  minute-man  at  the  front  needs  to 
be  ready  for  all  emergencies,  for  he  meets 
all  kinds  of  original  characters.  One  of 
the  most  successful  men  I  ever  heard  of 
was  the  famous  Father  Paxton  described 
by  the  Rev.  E.  P.  Powell  in  the  Chris- 
tian Register  in  a  very  bright  article 
from  which  I  quote  :  — 

When  "blue,"  I  always  went  down  to  the  De- 
pository, and  begged  him  for  a  few  stories.  He 
rode  a  splendid  horse,  that  was  in  full  sympathy 
with  his  master,  and  bore  the  significant  name, 
Robert  Raikes.  There  were  few  houses  except 
those  built  of  logs,  and  these  were  not  prejudiced 
against  good  ventilation.  He  laughed  long  and 
loud  at  his  experience  in  one  of  these,  which  he 
reached  one  night  in  a  furious  storm.  He  was 
welcomed  to  the  best,  which  was  a  single  rude  bed, 
while  the  family  slept  on  the  floor,  behind  a  sheet 
hung  up  for  that  special  occasion.  Paxton  was  so 
thoroughly  tired  that  he  slept  sound  as  soon  as 
he  touched  the  bed ;  but  he  half  waked  in  the 
morning  with  the  barking  of  a  dog.  The  master  of 


THE    ODDITIES    OF   THE  FRONTIER.       65 

the  house  was  shaking  him,  and  halloing,  "  I  say, 
stranger  !  pull  in  your  feet  or  Bowser  '11  bite  'em  ! " 
Stretching  out  in  the  night,  he  had  run  his  feet 
through  the  side  of  the  house,  between  the  logs; 
and  the  dog  outside  had  gone  for  them.  The 
time  he  took  in  pulling  in  was  so  trifling  as  to  be 
hardly  worth  the  mention. 

Those  who  know  little  of  frontier  life  can  have 
no  idea  of  the  difficulties  to  be  met  by  a  man  with 
Paxton's  mission.  There  was  one  district,  not  far 
from  Cairo,  that  was  ruled  by  a  pious  old  fellow  who 
swore  that  no  Sunday-school  should  be  set  up  -'in 
that  kidntry."  Some  one  cautioned  "  the  missioner  " 

to  keep  away  from  M ,  who  would  surely  be  as 

good  as  his    word  and    thrash  him.       M was 

a  Hard-shell  Baptist,  and  owned  the  church,  which 
was  built  also  of  logs.  He  lived  in  the  only  white- 
washed log  house  of  the  region.  Instead  of  avoid- 
ing him,  Father  Paxton  rode  up  one  day,  and 
jumping  off  Robert  Raikes,  hitched  him  to  the 
rail  that  always  was  to  be  found  before  a  Southern 
house.  Old  M  —  —  sat  straddle  of  a  log  in  front 
of  his  door  eating  peaches  from  a  basket.  Paxton 
straddled  the  log  on  the  other  side  of  the  basket, 
and  helped  himself.  This  was  Southern  style.  You 
were  welcome  to  help  yourself  so  long  as  there  was 
anything  to  eat.  The  conversation  that  started  up 
was  rather  wary,  for  M suspected  who  his  visi- 
tor was.  Pretty  soon  Paxton  noticed  some  hogs 
in  a  lot  near  them.  "  Mighty  fine  lot  of  hogs, 
stranger ! " 


66        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER, 

"And  you  mought   say   well   they  be   a   mighty 
fine  lot  of  hogs." 

"  How  many  mought  there  be,  stranger  ?  " 

"  There  mought  be  sixty-two  hogs  in  that  there 
lot,  and  they  can't  be  beat." 

Just  then  a  little  boy  went  up  and  grabbed  a 
peach. 

•-"  Mought  that  be  your  young  un,  stranger?" 
asked  Paxton. 

"As  nigh  as  one  can  say,  that  mought  be  mine." 

"  And  a  fine  chap  he  be,  surely." 

"A  purty  fine  one,  I  reckon  myself." 

"How  many  young  ones  mought  you  have,  my 
friend  ? " 

"Well,  stranger,  that's  where  you  have  me. 
Sally,  I  say,  come  to  the  door  there  !  You  count 
them  childer  while  I  name  'em  —  no,  you  name  'em, 
and  I'll  count." 

So  they  counted  out  seventeen  children.  Paxton 
had  his  cue  now,  and  was  ready. 

"  Stranger,  I  say,"  he  said,  "  this  seems  to  me  a 
curious  kind  of  a  kidntry." 

"  Why  so,  stranger  ? " 

"  Because,  when  I  axed  ye  how  many  hogs  ye 
had,  ye  could  tell  me  plum  off ;  but  when  I  axed  ye 
how  many  children  ye  had,  ye  had  to  count  right 
smart  before  ye  could  tell.  Seems  to  me  ye  pay 
a  lettle  more  attention  to  your  hogs  than  ye  do 
to  your  childer." 

"Stranger,"  shouted  M ,   "ye  mought  sure 

be  the  missioner.     You've  got  me,  sure  !    You  shall 


THE  ODDITIES   OF   THE  FRONTIER.        6? 

have  the  church  in  the  holler  next  Sunday,  and  me 
and  my  wife  and  my  seventeen  shall  all  be  there." 

True  to  his  word,  he  helped  Paxton  to  establish 
a  school.  When  I  was  in  St.  Louis,  there  was 
a  Sunday-school  convention  there.  A  fine-looking 
young  man  came  up  to  Father  Paxton,  who  was 
then  in  charge  of  the  Sunday-school  Depository, 
and  said,  — 

"  Don't  ye  know  me,  Father  Paxton  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Paxton  ;  "  I  reckon  I  don't  recall  ye." 

"Well,    I  am  from ;  and  I  am  one  of  the 

seventeen  children  of  M .  And  I  am  a  dele- 
gate here,  representing  over  one  hundred  Sunday- 
schools  sprung  from  that  one." 


68         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 


VI. 

LIGHTS    AND    SHADOWS. 

PERHAPS  no  man  gets  such  a  vivid  idea 
of  the  dark  and  bright  sides  of  frontier 
life  as  the  general  missionary.  One  week 
among  the  rich,  entertained  sumptuously, 
and  housed  with  all  the  luxuries  of  hot  air 
and  water  and  the  best  of  cooking ;  and 
then,  in  less  than  twelve  hours,  he  may  find 
himself  in  a  lumber-wagon,  called  a  stage- 
coach, bumping  along  over  the  wretched 
roads  of  a  new  country,  and  lodged  at 
night  in  a  log  house  with  the  wind  whist- 
ling through  the  chinks  where  the  mud 
has  fallen  out,  to  sit  down  with  a  family 
who  do  not  taste  fresh  meat  for  weeks 
together,  who  are  twelve  miles  from  a 
doctor  and  as  many  from  the  post-office. 

Nowhere  in  the  world  can  a  man  so 
soon  exchange  the  refinements  of  civil- 
ized life  for  one  of  hardship  and  toil 


LIGHTS   AND    SHADOWS.  69 

as  in  a  new  country.  Our  minute-man 
must  share  with  the  settler  all  his  toils, 
and  yet  often  forego  the  settler's  hope. 
The  life  among  frontiersmen  is  apt  to 
unfit  a  man  for  other  work.  His  scanty 
salary  will  not  allow  many  new  books, 
and  often  his  papers  are  out  of  date. 
The  finding  of  a  home  is  one  of  the  worst 
of  hardships.  Let  us  start  with  the  mis- 
sionary to  the  front;  our  way  lies  through 
a  rich  valley.  The  moon  is  at  her  full, 
and  we  pass  fine  farms.  The  scent  of 
the  hay  floats  in  at  the  car  windows ; 
fine  orchards  surround  the  houses,  while 
great  flocks  of  sheep  are  seen  feeding, 
and  herds  resting,  comfortably  chewing 
the  cud. 

But  morning  comes,  and  we  must 
change  cars.  We  are  in  a  city  t)f  80,000 
people,  with  498  factories  with  15,000 
employees,  where  a  few  years  ago  a  few 
log  houses  only  were  in  sight.  As  we 
change  cars  we  change  company  too. 
We  left  the  train  at  a  Union  Station, 
with  its  green  lawns  and  trim  garden,  to 


/O        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

find  a  station  with  old  oil-barrels  around 
it,  the  mud  all  over  everything,  the  train 
filled  with  lumbermen,  with  their  red 
mackinaw  shirts  and  great  boots  spiked 
on  the  bottoms,  and  a  comforter  tied 
around  the  waist. 

A  few  women  are  on  the  train,  often 
none  at  all.  Our  new  road  is  poorly 
ballasted,  and  the  train  bounces  along 
like  a  great  bumble-bee.  The  men  are 
all  provided  with  pocket-pistols  that  are 
often  more  deadly  than  a  revolver.  At 
the  first  station  —  a  little  mouse-colored 
affair,  sometimes  without  a  ticket-agent — 
we  notice  the  change.  The  stumps  are 
thick  in  the  fields ;  many  of  the  houses 
have  the  building-paper  fluttering  in  the 
wind  ;  the  streets  are  of  sawdust.  You 
can  see  the  flags  growing  up  from  the 
swamp  beneath.  The  saloons  are  numer- 
ous ;  and  as  the  train  is  a  mixed  one  in 
more  senses  than  one,  abundant  time  is 
given  while  shunting  the  freight-cars  for 
the  men  to  reload  their  pocket-pistols 
and  get  gloriously  drunk. 


LIGHTS  AATD    SHADOWS.  /I 

"  Kings  may  be  blest,  but  Tarn  was  glorious." 

And  so  on  we  go  again  for  forty 
miles,  when  all  leave  the  train  but  one 
solitary  man,  who  lies  prostrate  in  the 
car,  too  big  for  our  little  conductor  to 
lift,  and  so  he  goes  to  the  terminus  with 
us.  It  is  getting  late,  and  the  last  ten 
miles  are  through  a  wilderness  of  dead 
pines,  with  here  and  there  a  winding 
line  of  timothy  and  clover  that  has  sprung 
up  from  seeds  dropped  by  the  supply 
teams.  But  presently  we  see  a  pretty 
stream  with  bosky  glades,  and  visions  of 
speckled  trout  come  up  ;  then  an  immense 
mill,  and  a  village  of  white  houses  with 
green  Venetian  blinds,  and  a  pert  little 
church.  We  had  expected  some  good 
deacon  to  meet  us  and  take  us  home  to 
dinner  ;  but,  alas !  no  deacon  is  waiting, 
or  dinner  either  for  some  time.  For  out 
of  eight  hundred  people  only  five  church- 
members  can  be  found,  four  of  them 
women. 

It  well  nigh  daunts  the  minute-man's 
courage  as  he  sees  the  open  saloons,  the 


72         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER.' 

big,  rough  men,  the  great  bull-terriers  on 
the  steps  of  the  houses.  The  awful  swear- 
ing and  vile  language  appal  him,  and  the 
thought  of  bringing  his  little  ones  to  such 
a  place  almost  breaks  his  spirits  ;  but  here 
he  has  come  to  stay  and  work.  The  hotel 
is  his  home  until  he  can  find  a  house  for 
his  family.  There  is  but  one  place  to 
rent  in  the  town,  and  that  is  in  a  fearful 
condition.  It  is  afterwards  whitewashed 
and  used  as  a  chicken-coop.  But  at  length 
a  family  moves  away,  and  the  house  is 
secured  just  in  time  ;  for  the  new  school- 
master is  after  it,  and  meets  the  man  on 
the  way  with  a  long  face. 

"  You  got  the  house  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  What  can  I  do  ?  my  goods  are  on  the 
way  !  " 

"  Oh,  they  will  build  one   for  you,  but 
not  for  a  preacher." 

11  No,    they   won't.       Could    I    get   my 
things  in  for  eight  or  ten  days  ?  " 

11  Oh,  yes."     The  minister  is  so  glad  to 
get  the  place  that  he  feels  generous.     But 


LIGHTS  AND  SHADOWS.  73 

the  good  man  stays  eleven  months ;  and  he 
has  besides  his  wife  and  child,  a  mother- 
in-law,  a  grandmother-in-law,  a  niece,  a 
protegee,  and  a  young  man,  a  nephew,  who 
has  come  to  get  an  education  and  do  the 
chores.  They  are  all  very  nice  people,  but 
it  leaves  the  minute-man  and  his  wife  and 
four  children  with  but  three  rooms.  The 
beds  must  stand  so  that  the  children  have 
to  climb  over  the  head-boards  to  get  at 
them.  The  family  sit  by  the  big  stove  at 
their  meals,  and  can  look  out  on  the  glow- 
ing sand  and  see  the  swifts  darting  about ; 
while  in  the  winter  the  study  is  sitting- 
room  and  playground  too. 

But  this  is  luxury.  Often  the  minute- 
man  must  be  content  with  one  room,  for 
which  the  rent  charged  may  be  extortion- 
ate. Even  then  he  must  keep  his  water 
in  a  barrel  out  in  the  hall.  In  cold  weather 
perhaps  it  must  be  chopped  before  get- 
ting it  into  the  kettle. 

I  knew  of  one  man  who  lived  in  a  log 
house.  It  had  been  lathed  and  plastered 
on  the  inside,  and  weather-boarded  on  the 


74        MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

outside,  so  that  it  was  very  warm,  and  so 
thick  that  you  could  not  hear  the  storms 
outside,  which  raged  at  times  for  days  to- 
gether. 

One  day  late  in  March  a  fearful  snow- 
storm arose,  and  for  three  days  and  nights 
the  snow  came  thick  and  fast.  Luckily 
it  thawed  fast  too.  On  the  fourth  day 
there  was  need  for  the  minute-man  to  go 
for  the  doctor,  who  lived  some  miles  away. 
On  the  road  he  engaged  a  woman  to  go 
to  his  house,  where  her  services  were  in 
demand.  After  he  had  summoned  the 
doctor  the  good  man  took  his  time,  and 
reached  home  in  the  afternoon.  He  was 
greeted  by  a  duet  from  two  young  stran- 
gers from  a  far  land. 

Night  closed  in  fast ;  the  house  was 
so  thick  that  no  one  suspected  another 
storm ;  but  on  going  out  to  milk  the  cow, 
it  was  storming  again,  and  the  man  saw 
he  had  need  to  be  careful  or  he  would 
not  find  his  way  back  from  the  barn, 
though  it  was  only  a  few  yards  away. 

When  he  reached  the  house,  the  good 


LIGHTS  AND  SHADOWS.  ?$ 

lady  visitor,  who  had  insisted  that  she 
could  not  stay  later  than  evening,  gave 
up  all  hope  of  getting  home  that  night. 
She  stayed  a  fortnight  !  For  this  time 
the  storm  raged  without  thawing,  and  for 
three  nights  and  days  the  snow  piled  up 
over  the  windows,  and  almost  covered  the 
little  pines,  in  drifts  fifteen  feet  deep. 
Not  a  horse  came  by  for  two  weeks. 

Once  another  man  started  in  a  storm  on 
a  similar  errand  ;  but  in  spite  of  his  love, 
courage,  and  despair,  he  was  overwhelmed, 
and  sinking  in  agony  in  the  drift,  he  never 
moved  again.  When  the  storm  was  over, 
the  sun  came  out ;  and  what  a  mockery 
it  seemed  !  The  squirrels  ran  nimbly  up 
the  trees,  the  blue  jays  called  merrily;  but 
the  settlers  looked  over  the  white  expanse, 
and-  missed  the  gray  smoke  that  usually 
rose  from  the  little  log  shanty. 

The  men  gathered  to  break  the  roads  ; 
the  ox-team  and  snow-plough  were  brought 
out,  and  the  dogs  were  wild  with  delight 
as  they  ploughed  up  the  snow  with  their 
snouts,  and  barked  for  very  joy ;  but  the 


76        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

men  were  sorrowful,  and  worked  as  for 
life  and  death.  Half  way  to  the  house  the 
husband  was  found  motionless  as  a  statue, 
his  blue  eyes  gazing  up  into  the  sky.  The 
men  redoubled  their  efforts,  and  gained  the 
house.  The  stoutest  heart  quailed.  A  poor 
cat  was  mewing  piteously  in  the  window. 
And  when  at  last  the  oldest  man  went  in, 
he  found  mother  and  new-born  child  frozen 
to  death. 


SATURDAY  AFTERNOON  IN   THE   SOUTH.   77 

VII. 

SATURDAY  AFTERNOON  IN  THE  SOUTH. 

THE  South  has  two  kinds  of  frontier, 
—  that  which  has  never  been  settled,  and 
once  thickly  settled  parts  that  have  grown 
up  to  wild  woods  and  wastes  since  the 
war.  In  old  times  the  slave  had  a  half- 
holiday  on  Saturday,  which  custom  the 
colored  brother  still  keeps  up  ;  and  a  more 
picturesque  scene  is  not  to  be  found  than 
that  presented  by  a  town,  say  of  three 
thousand  inhabitants,  where  the  county 
has  seven  colored  people  to  one  white. 

Never  was  such  a  motley  company  gath- 
ered in  one  place,  —  old  men  with  griz- 
zled heads,  all  with  a  rabbit- foot  in  their 
pocket,  a  necklace  for  a  charm  around 
their  necks,  their  bronzed  breasts  open 
to  view  ;  old  mammies  with  scarlet  ban- 
dannas ;  young  belles  of  all  shades  —  here 
a  mulatto  girl  in  pale-blue  dress  and 


78         MINUTE— MAN  ON   THE    FRO  A7  TIER. 

pointed  shoes,  her  waist  as  disfigured  as 
any  Parisian's,  there  a  mammoth,  coal- 
black  negro  driving  a  pair  of  splendid 
mules. 

Here  is  an  original  turnout ;  it  was 
once  a  sulky.  The  shafts  stick  out  above 
the  great  ears  of  the  mule ;  the  seat  has 
been  replaced  by  an  old  rocking-chair ; 
the  wheels  are  wired-up  pieces  of  a  small 
barrel  that  have  replaced  some  of  the 
spokes,  while  fully  half  the  harness  is 
made  up  of  rope,  string,  and  wire.  The 
owner's  clothes  are  one  mass  of  patch- 
work, and  his  hat  is  full  of  holes,  out 
of  which  the  unruly  wool  escapes  and 
keeps  his  hat  from  blowing  off. 

The  sidewalk  presents  a  moving  pano- 
rama unmatched  for  richness  of  color.  As 
we  leave  the  town,  we  ride  past  planta- 
tions that  once  had  palatial  residences, 
whose  owners  had  from  one  to  three 
thousand  slaves,  the  little  log  cabins  ar- 
ranged around  and  near  the  house.  In 
many  cases  the  houses  are  still  there,  but 
dilapidated. 


SATURDAY  AFTERNOON  IN   THE   SOUTH.    79 

Here,  where  each  white  person  was 
once  worth  on  an  average  thirty  thousand 
dollars,  to-day  you  may  buy  land  for  a 
dollar  an  acre,  with  all  the  buildings.  It 
is  a  lovely  park-like  country,  with  clear 
streams  running  through  meadows,  branch- 
ing into  a  dozen  channels,  where  the  fish 
dart  about ;  and  the  trees  shade  and  per- 
fume the  air  with  their  rich  blossoms,  and 
the  whole  region  is  made  exquisitely  vocal 
with  the  song  of  the  peerless  mocking- 
bird. Here,  too,  the  marble  crops  out 
from  the  soil,  and  some  of  the  richest 
iron  ore  in  the  world,  all  waiting  for  the 
spirit  of  enterprise  to  turn  the  land  into 
an  Eldorado. 

To  be  sure,  there  are  obstacles ;  but  the 
Southern  man  of  to-day  was  born  into 
conditions  for  which  he  is  not  responsible, 
any  more  than  his  father  and  ancestors 
before  him  were  responsible  for  theirs. 
And  those  that  started  the  trouble  lived 
in  a  day  when  men  knew  no  better.  Did 
not  old  John  Hawkins  as  he  sailed  the 
seas  in  his  good  ship  Jesus,  packed  with 


So         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

Guinea  negroes,  praise  God  for  his  great 
success?  So  we  find  the  men  of  that 
day  piously  presenting  their  pastor  and 
the  church  with  a  good  slave,  and  con- 
sidering it  a  meritorious  action. 

o 

Time,  with  colonies  settling  in  the  new 
South,  will  yet  bring  back  prosperity 
without  the  old  taint,  and  keep  step  with 
all  that  is  good  in  the  nation.  It  cannot 
be  done  at  once.  I  knew  an  energetic 
American  who  had  built  a  town,  and 
thought  he  would  go  South,  and  at  least 
start  another;  but,  said  he,  "  I  had  not 
been  there  a  week  when  I  felt,  as  I  rocked 
to  and  fro,  listening  to  the  music  of  the 
birds,  and  catching  the  fragrance  of  the 
jessamine,  that  I  did  not  care  whether 
school  kept  or  not." 

There  is  no  great  virtue  in  the  activity 
that  walks  fast  to  keep  from  freezing. 
We  owe  a  large  portion  of  our  goodness 
to  Jack  Frost. 

Dr.  Ryder  tells  a  story  of  one  of  our 
commercial  travellers  who  had  been  over- 
taken by  night,  and  had  slept  in  the  home 


SATURDAY  AFTERNOON  IN   THE  SOUTH.    8 1 

of  a  poor  white.  In  the  morning  he 
naturally  asked  whether  he  could  wash. 
"Ye  can,  I  reckon,  down  to  the  branch." 
A  little  boy  belonging-  to  the  house  fol- 
lowed him  ;  for  such  clothes  and  jewellery 
the  lad  had  never  before  seen.  After 
seeing  the  man  wash,  shave,  and  clean 
his  teeth,  he  could  hold  in  no  longer, 
and  said,  — 

"  Mister,  do  you  wash  every  day  ?  " 

"Yep." 

"  And  scrape  yer  face  with  that  knife  ? " 

"  Yep." 

"And  rub  yer  teeth  too?" 

"  Yep." 

"  Wai,  yer  must  be  an  awful  lot  of 
trouble  to  yerself." 

Civilization  undoubtedly  means  an  aw- 
ful lot  of  trouble. 


82         MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE  FRONTIER. 


VIII. 

ALL    SORTS    AND    CONDITIONS    OF    MEN. 

THE  frontier  is  the  place  to  find  all 
sorts  of  conditions  and  also  of  men. 
Monotony  is  not  one  of  the  troubles  of 
the  minute-man.  He  is  frequently  too 
poor  to  dress  in  a  ministerial  style,  and 
quite  often  he  is  not  known  until  he 
begins  the  services.  This  sometimes 
leads  to  the  serio-comic,  as  witness  the 
following :  — 

Our  man  was  looking  over  a  portion 
of  the  country  where  he  wished  to  locate, 
and  in  making  the  necessary  inquiries  he 
asked  many  questions  about  homesteads 
and  timber  claims.  Notice  having  been 
given  that  there  would  be  preaching  at 
the  schoolhouse,  the  people  assembled; 
and  while  waiting  for  the  preacher,  they 
discussed  this  stranger,  whom  they  all 
thought  to  be  a  claim  jumper.  He  cer- 


ALL   SORTS  AND    CONDITIONS   OF  MEN.    83 

tainly  was  not  a  very  handsome  man. 
They  proposed  to  hang  him  to  the  first 
tree.  Trees  were  scarce  there,  and  pos- 
sibly that  fact  saved  him.  He  came  up 
while  they  were  talking,  entered  the 
schoolhouse,  and  from  the  desk  told  them 
he  was  the  preacher,  and  was  going  to 
settle  among  them.  Here  was  a  prom- 
ising field,  where  people  were  ready  to 
hang  a  man  on  their  way  to  church.  It 
is  a  fact  that  where  we  find  people  ready 
for  deeds  of  this  kind  we  have  the  ma- 
terial for  old-fashioned  revivals  of  the 
Cartwright  type. 

When  Jesse  James  was  shot,  it  was  easy 
to  find  a  man  to  preach  a  sermon  full  of 
hope  to  the  bereaved  relations,  and  to 
crown  the  ruffian  with  martyrdom. 

The  minute-man  has  some  hair-breadth 
escapes.  He  comes  upon  a  crowd  of  so- 
called  vigilants,  who  have  just  hanged 
some  men  for  horse-thievery ;  and,  as 
he  has  on  store-clothes,  he  narrowly  es- 
capes the  same  fate.  In  one  instance  he 
was  able  to  prove  too  late  that  they  had 


84         MINUTE-MAN-  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

hanged  an  innocent  lad  ;  and  in  that  case 
the  poor  boy  had  not  only  pleaded  his 
innocence  but  had  explained  that  he  was 
tired,  and  had  been  invited  to  ride  by  the 
gang  who  had  stolen  the  horses,  the  men 
themselves  corroborating  his  story ;  but  it 
did  not  avail ;  and  the  poor  boy  was  strung 
up,  and  a  mother's  heart  was  broken  in 
the  far  East.  Often  these  border  ruffians 
act  from  unaccountable  impulse,  just  as 
the  Indians  would  torture  some  captives 
and  adopt  others  from  mere  whim. 

It  is  an  awful  commentary  on  the 
condition  of  things  on  our  frontiers,  that 
a  man  has  a  better  chance  of  escape  when 
he  has  murdered  a  fellow  creature  than 
when  he  has  stolen  a  horse.  And  yet 
in  this  year  1895,  I  have  seen  a  man  who 
was  trying  in  vain  to  sell  a  horse  for  $1.50. 

To  illustrate  how  much  more  valuable 
life  is  than  gold,  a  minister  relates  this 
anecdote  of  a  California  miner  who,  to 
save  a  young  girl  in  a  shipwreck,  threw 
his  belt  of  gold  away  and  saved  her  life. 
After  the  meeting  was  over  a  matronly 


ALL   SORTS  AND  'CONDITIONS   OF  MEN.    85 

woman  came  up  to  him  and  said,  "  Sir, 
I  was  the  young  girl  the  miner  saved." 
Or  he  enters  a  log  house,  and  finds  a 
beautiful  woman  and  her  no  less  beau- 
tiful daughter,  and  soon  learns  that,  a 
few  years  before,  they  were  moving  among 
the  brilliant  throng  that  surround  roy- 
alty in  Europe ;  and  in  that  little  room 
the  mother  has  the  dress  and  some  of 
the  jewels  in  which  she  was  presented 
to  Queen  Victoria.  He  finds  them  in 
the  little  log  house,  apparently  contented  ; 
but  there  is  a  romance  and  a  mystery 
here  that  many  would  like  to  unravel. 
Or,  maybe,  he  enters  the  neat  frame 
house  of  a  broken-down  Wall-street  stock- 
broker, who  with  the  remnants  of  his 
fortune  hopes  to  retrieve  himself  upon  his 
one  hundred  and  sixty  acre  homestead, 
and  who,  with  his  refined  and  cultured 
family,  makes  an  oasis  in  the  desert  for 
the  tired  missionary. 

In  the  winter  he  sometimes  rides  a 
hundred  miles  to  Conference,  and  time 
and  again  is  upset  as  he  attempts  to  pass 


86         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

through  the  immense  drifts.  His  harness 
gives  way  when  he  is  miles  from  a  house  ; 
and  he  must  patch  it  up  as  best  he  can 
from  the  other  harness,  and  lead  one 
horse.  He  must  learn  to  ride  a  tricking 
broncho,  to  sleep  out  on  the  prairie,  to 
cover  himself  with  a  snowdrift  to  keep 
from  freezing,  and  in  case  of  extremity  to 
kill  his  horse  and  crawl  inside,  perhaps 
barely  to  escape  with  his  life  as  the  warm 
body  changes  into  a  refrigerator.  If  he 
lives  in  a  sod  house,  he  must  often  put 
the  sheets  above  his  head  to  keep  away 
the  lizards  that  crawl  out  as  the  weather 
becomes  warm,  and  an  occasional  rattler 
waking  up  from  his  torpid  winter  sleep. 
At  times  the  rains  thaw  his  roof  out, 
and  it  drops  too  ;  and  then  he  must  re- 
shingle  with  sod. 

Often  he  is  called  to  go  forty  and  fifty 
miles  to  visit  the  sick,  to  sit  up  with  the 
dying,  and  to  cheer  their  last  moments. 
He  can  and  does  do  more  useful  work 
when  attending  the  poor  and  sickly  than 
in  any  other  way.  Many  a  family  has 


ALL   SORTS  AND    CONDITIONS   OF  MEN.    8/ 

been  won  through  the  devotion  of  the 
minute-man  to  some  poor  little  sufferer. 

One  day  he  meets  a  man  hauling  wood 
with  a  pair  of  wretched  mules.  The  man 
is  dressed  in  blue  denim,  the  trousers  are 
stuffed  into  boots  that  are  full  of  holes. 
A  great  sombrero  hat  is  on  his  head. 
By  his  side  is  a  beautiful  young  woman. 
She  is  the  wife.  He  finds  on  inquiry 
that  the  man  has  been  a  brilliant  preacher, 
writer,  and  lecturer ;  yet  here,  two  thou- 
sand miles  from'  his  Eastern  home,  he 
is  hauling  railway  ties  for  a  living. 

I  once  visited  a  family  living  in  a 
house  so  small  that  the  kitchen  would 
barely  hold  more  than  one  person  at  a 
time.  There  was  a  sick  man  there, 
whom  I  used  to  call  upon  two  and 
three  times  a  week.  In  order  to  turn 
himself,  he  had  a  leather  strap  hung 
from  the  rafters.  The  woman  of  the 
house  was  of  a  cruel  disposition.  She 
was  the  second  wife  of  the  sick  man's 
brother,  and  had  a  daughter  who  was 
about  thirteen  years  of  age,  but  who  was 


88         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

large  for  her  years.  I  used  to  find  this 
child  working  about  in  her  bare  feet  and 
singing,  "  I'm  so  glad  that  my  Father 
in  heaven."  And  I  felt  quite  encour- 
aged, as  the  child  had  a  bad  reputa- 
tion. 

One  day  this  girl  came  to  the  parson- 
age and  brought  a  silver  napkin-ring, 
saying  it  was  a  New  Year's  gift,  and 
that  her  mother  was  sorry  she  could  not 
have  engraved  upon  it  "For  my  dear 
pasture."  My  wife  said  we  ought  not 
to  take  it ;  but  I  replied,  — 

"Yes;  these  people  get  fair  wages, 
and  would  feel  offended." 

So  we  kept  it.  Some  days  after,  as 
two  men  were  felling  a  large  pine-tree 
which  was  hollow  at  the  base,  they  were 
surprised  to  see  albums,  bracelets,  nap- 
kin-rings, combs,  spoons,  and  other  arti- 
cles falling  out.  About  this  time  a 
saleswoman  had  been  missing  just  such 
things  from  her  counter ;  and  it  was  soon 
discovered  that  my  youthful  convert  was 
a  first-class  kleptomaniac,  equal  to  any 


ALL  SORTS  AND   CONDITIONS   OF  MEN.    89 

city  thief  of  the  same  class.  Her  mode 
of  operation  was  to  call  the  woman's  at- 
tention to  something  on  the  shelf  behind 
her ;  then  taking  anything  within  reach, 
and  with  an  "  Oh,  how  pretty ! "  she 
would  decamp. 

I  met  the  mother  on  my  way  to  visit 
the  sick  man.  "O  Elder!"  she  said, 
"  I  am  in  a  peck  of  trouble.  That  gal 
of  mine  has  cleared  off  on  a  raft  with  a 
lumberman,  and  she  has  been  stealing 
too.  What  shall  I  do?" 

As  I  knew  that  the  woman  had  tied 
the  girl's  tongue  with  whip-cord,  and 
beaten  it  with  birch  bark  until  it  bled, 
to  cure  her  of  lying,  I  said,  "  You  had 
better  send  her  to  the  Reform  School." 
It  appeared  afterward  that  the  man  who 
had  run  off  with  the  girl  was  a  minis- 
ter's son  ;  and  he  said  in  court  he  had 
taken  pity  on  the  girl,  and  wanted  to 
save  her  from  the  cruelty  of  her  mother. 
The  girl  was  sent  to  the  Reform  School 
at  Adrian,  but  not  before  she  had  given 
the  sheriff  the  slip,  and  taken  another 


90         MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

girl  with  her,  getting  as  far  as  Roches- 
ter, N.Y.,  before  she  was  recaptured. 

Sometimes  in  these  frontier  towns  the 
sermon  is  stopped  in  a  most  unexpected 
way.  I  remember  one  good  man  preach- 
ing on  Jacob.  An  old  woman,  who  was 
sitting  on  the  front  bench,  became  deeply 
interested  ;  and  when  the  minister  said, 
"  When  the  morning  came,  Jacob,  who 
had  served  all  these  long  years  for  his 
wife,  found  not  the  beautiful  Rachel, 
but  the  weak-eyed  Leah,"  the  old  lady 
broke  out  with  "  Oh,  my  God,  what  a 
pity !  "  That  ended  the  discourse,  and 
the  benediction  was  omitted. 

In  another  back  settlement  a  young 
student  was  preaching  on  the  Prodigal 
Son.  "  And  what,  my  friends,  would  you 
have  done  had  your  son  come  home 
in  that  way  after  such  conduct  ? "  The 
answer  was  prompt,  "  I  would  have  shot 
the  boy,  and  saved  the  calf." 


THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME.  91 

IX. 

THE    SOUTH    IN    SPRINGTIME. 

"  You  are  going-  the  wrong  time  of 
the  year,"  was  the  reiterated  warning  of 
friends  who  heard  that  I  was  to  make 
a  Southern  trip.  Experience  proved 
them  to  be  as  far  astray  as  if  they  had 
warned  one  from  going  North  in  June ; 
for  the  May  of  the  South  is  the  June 
of  the  North.  Nature  was  revelling  in 
her  fullest  dress,  making  a  symphony  in 
green,  —  all  shades,  from  the  pale  tint 
of  the  chinquapin  and  persimmon,  to 
the  deep  indigo  of  the  long-leafed  pine, 
and  the  tender  purple  green  of  the 
distant  hills,  —  a  perfect  extravaganza  of 
vegetable  growth. 

The  weather  was  delicious ;  from  the 
south  and  east  came  the  ocean  air,  and 
from  the  north  and  west  the  balsam-laden 
ozone  of  the  mountains,  every  turn  in 


92          MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

the  road  revealing  new  beauties.  The 
cool  Southern  homes,  with  their  wide 
verandas  covered  with  honeysuckle,  and 
great  hallways  running  right  through 
the  house,  often  revealing  some  of  the 
daintiest  little  pictures  of  light  and  shade, 
from  apple  or  china  tree  varied  with  the 
holly,  the  Cape  jasmine,  and  scupper- 
nong  vines,  the  latter  often  covering  a 
half-acre  of  land,  while  chanticleer  and 
his  seraglio  strutted  in  proud  content, 
monarch  of  all  he  surveyed.  High  on  a 
pole  hung  the  hollowed  gourds,  homes 
for  the  martins  and  swallows.  The  mis- 
tress sat  at  her  sewing  in  the  shady 
porch,  while  out  beyond,  under  a  giant 
oak,  with  gracefully  twined  turban  and 
brilliant  dress,  the  sable  washerwoman 
hung  out  her  many-colored  pieces,  mak- 
ing altogether  a  scene  of  rural  beauty 
seldom  surpassed. 

What  joy  to  sit  in  the  ample  porch 
and  look  over  the  great  cotton-fields 
with  their  regular  rows  of  bluish  green, 
variegated  by  the  tender  hue  of  the  young 


THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME.        •       93 

corn,  and  a  dozen  shades  of  as  many 
species  of  oak,  while  the  brilliant  tulip- 
tree  and  the  distant  hills,  now  of  softest 
blue,  contrasting1  with  the  rich,  red  ochre 
of  the  soil,  make  up  a  picture  never  to 
be  forgotten.  Cooled  by  the  breezes  that 
sweep  through  the  porch,  one  dozes  away 
an  hour  of  enchantment.  The  negroes 
with  their  mules,  in  the  distance,  in  al- 
most every  field,  add  to  its  piquancy,  and 
often,  floating  on  the  wind,  come  wild 
snatches  in  weird  minor  notes  the  broken 
.rhythm  of  their  old  Virginia  reel,  per- 
formed with  the  rollicking  exuberance  of 
the  race. 

The  reader  must  not  suppose  that  all 
Southern  homes  answer  to  the  above 
description.  Thousands  of  houses  are 
without  a  porch  or  any  shade  save  that 
which  nature  gives.  The  chimneys  are 
built  on  the  outside,  sometimes  of  stone, 
sometimes  of  brick  or  of  clay,  while 
layers  of  one-inch  slats  hold  the  chim- 
ney together ;  but,  as  a  rule,  so  prodigal 
is  nature  that  a  vine  of  some  kind  will 


94        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

entwine  around  their  otherwise  bare  and 
severe  outlines,  and  make  them,  like  some 
dogs,  homely  enough  to  be  handsome. 

Although  these  poorer  houses  are  de- 
void of  all  artificial  attempts  to  beautify, 
they  are  frequently  built  near  a  great  oak 
and  the  dense  china-tree  for  shade,  while 
wild  fruits  of  many  kinds  grow  promiscu- 
ously about.  In  every  hedgerow,  and 
within  a  stone's  throw  of  nearly  every 
country  home,  will  be  found  partridges, 
wild  pigeons,  and  all  sorts  of  small  game, 
with  plenty  of  foxes  to  keep  it  in  reason-, 
able  bounds,  while  every  household  has 
a  number  of  hounds  and  curs  for  the 
foxes.  But  with  all  the  varied  beauty 
of  the  scene,  the  New  Englander  con- 
stantly misses  the  well-kept  lawn,  —  for 
here  bare  ground  always  takes  the  place 
of  grass,  —  and  there  are  no  village  green 
and  fine  shaded  roads,  and  that  general 
neatness  which  distinguishes  the  rural 
scenes  of  "  the  Pilgrim  land." 

A  few  words  about  the  people.  They 
are  as  warm-hearted  as  their  climate ; 


THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME.  95 

the  stranger  is  greeted  with  such  invita- 
tions as  these  :  "  Come  in  ;  "  "  Take  a 
chair;  "  "  Have  some  of  the  fry  ;  "  "  Have 
some  fresh  water."  They  are  up  with 
the  sun  —  family  prayer  by  five,  A.M.  ; 
breakfast  half  an  hour  later ;  dinner  at 
one ;  supper  at  seven ;  to  bed  by  dark. 
The  churches  are  plain,  costing  seldom 
more  than  eight  hundred  or  one  thou- 
sand dollars ;  doors  on  all  sides  opposite 
each  other  to  allow  for  a  good  circulation 
of  air.  A  pail  of  water  stands  on  a  form 
near  the  pulpit.  The  church  generally 
stands  in  a  grove  or  the  forest  itself. 

The  people  are  very  fond  of  preach- 
ing. The  whole  family,  from  the  oldest 
to  the  youngest,  go  ;  and  one  may  often 
see  the  mother  at  the  communion  with 
a  little  one  at  the  breast.  Sometimes 
eleven  or  more  of  a  family  will  occupy 
a  wagon  filled  with  oak-splint  chairs. 

It  takes  one  back  thirty  years  ago  to 
the  West,  as  one  stands  at  the  church- 
door  and  sees  the  people  flocking  in 
through  winding  roads  in  the  woods,  the 


g6         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

sunlight  and  shadow  dancing  upon  the 
moving  teams  that  shine  like  satin  in 
the  bright  morning  air.  The  dogs  are 
wild  with  delight  as  they  start  a  covey  of 
partridges,  and  make  music  in  the  deep 
shadows  of  the  woods.  Here  a  group  of 
young  men  and  maidens  are  drinking  at 
the  spring. 

The  preacher  often  is  a  jack-of-all- 
trades  —  sometimes  a  doctor,  getting  his 
degree  from  the  family  medicine-book ; 
and  strange  to  say,  though  an  ardent 
believer  in  faith-cure,  and  with  marvel- 
lous accounts  of  cures  in  answer  to  prayer, 
yet  prescribing  a  liver  invigorator  when 
that  organ  is  in  trouble.  Some  of  these 
men  are  natural  orators,  and  with  their 
bursts  of  eloquence  often  hush  their 
hearers  to  holy  awe  and  inspiration.  They 
have  one  book,  and  believe  it.  No  doubts 
trouble  them.  Higher  criticism  has  never 
reached  them.  Mosaic  origin  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch is  unquestioned.  Moses  and  no 
other,  to  them,  wrote  the  five  books,  in- 
cluding the  account  of  his  own  burial. 


THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME.  97 

They  know  nothing  of  pre-exilic  Psalms 
or  Greek  periods  of  Daniel ;  but  all 
preach  Jesus,  no  matter  whence  they 
draw  their  text.  In  an  instant  they  make 
a  short  cut  for  Calvary. 

One  brother,  over  eighty  years  of  age, 
walks  fifteen  miles,  and  preaches  three 
times.  Some  of  his  sermons  take  two 
hours  in  delivery,  without  the  aid  of  a 
scrap  of  note  ;  and  the  talk  for  days  after 
is  on  the  sermon.  No  quarterlies,  month- 
lies, or  weeklies  lie  at  home  to  divert. 
No  lecturer  strays  to  that  region.  Here 
and  there  is  a  village  house  with  an 
organ  or  a  piano,  and,  of  course,  a  paper. 

I  am  speaking  of  the  rural  South,  —  and 
nearly  all  the  South  is  rural,  nearly  all 
American,  even  the  cities,  with  few  excep- 
tions, and  the  operatives  are  Southern, 
and  mostly  from  the  farms  ;  so  that  one 
may  find  a  city  whose  operatives  live  in 
another  State,  across  a  river,  in  a  com- 
munity numbering  nearly  seven  thousand 
souls,  and  most  of  them  keeping  pigs 
and  a  cow  (or,  rather,  not  keeping  them, 


98         MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

for  they  roam  at  their  own  sweet  will  down 
grassy,  ungraded  streets).  In  such  a  place 
one  meets  old  ladies  of  quite  respectable 
appearance,  with  the  little  snuffing-stick 
in  their  mouths,  or  a  pipe ;  and  here 
one  small  grocery  shop  may  sell  two 
hundred  dozen  of  little  tin  snuff-boxes  in 
a  month !  There  are  cities  in  the  South 
where  you  will  find  as  fine  hotels  and 
stores  as  any  on  the  continent.  But  from 
any  such  city  it  is  only  a  step  to  the 
most  primitive  conditions. 

Let  me  describe  a  characteristic  night 
scene  near  a  large  city.  My  friend  met 
me  at  the  depot  with  his  little  light  wagon 
and  diminutive  mule,  and  we  started  for 
the  homestead.  Our  road  lay  between 
banks  of  honeysuckle  that  saturated  the 
air  with  its  rich  perfume  ;  wild  -  goose 
plum,  persimmon,  bullice,  and  chinquapin 
(the  latter  somewhat  like  a  chestnut,  but 
smaller),  huckleberries  on  bushes  twelve 
feet  high,  called  currants  there,  lined  the 
road  on  either  side.  The  house  was  sur- 
rounded by  the  debris  of  former  corn- 


THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME.  99 

cribs  and  present  ones ;  stables  were 
scattered  here  and  there  in  picturesque 
confusion.  One  end  of  the  house  was 
open,  and  had  been  waiting  for  years  for 
its  chimney  ;  there  was  shrubbery  of  every 
kind  all  about.  I  had  the  usual  hearty 
welcome  and  supper,  and  then  attended 
the  inevitable  meeting  in  the  grove. 

In  the  glare  of  the  setting  sun  every- 
thing seemed  indescribably  wretched  ;  but 
it  was  May,  and  night  came  on  apace. 
The  stars  in  the  deep  blue  glowed  like 
gems  ;  and  then  the  queen  of  night  on 
her  sable  throne  threw  her  glamour  over 
the  scene,  and  the  stencil-marked  ground 
became  a  fairy  scene.  High  perched  upon 
a  mighty  oak  the  mistress  of  the  grove 
rained  music  on  the  cool  night  air,  —  first 
a  twitter  like  a  chaffinch,  then  an  aria 
worthy  of  Patti,  then  the  deep  notes  of 
the  blackbird,  then  a  whip-poor-will,  then 
a  grand  chorus  of  all  the  night-birds. 

A  short  breathing-spell,  and  off  on  an- 
other chorus,  and  so  the  whole  night 
through.  When  we  awoke  the  music 


100      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

still  poured  from  that  wondrous  throat 
of  the  American  mocking-bird.  How 
calm,  how  peaceful,  was  the  scene,  how 
pure  the  air !  The  lights  went  out  from 
neighboring  cots,  and  the  heavenly  hosts 
seemed  to  sing  together  once  more  the 
song  of  Bethlehem  —  but  alas!  Herod 
plots  while  angels  sing.  Not  far  off  is 
another  little  house  with  its  small  out- 
buildings. This  night  it  is  occupied  by 
a  mother  and  three  children.  The  father 
is  away  attending  a  religious  meeting. 
The  servant  who  usually  sleeps  in  the 
house  when  the  man  is  away  gives  a 
trifling  excuse  and  sleeps  in  the  shed. 
Before  retiring  she  quietly  unfastens  the 
pin  which  holds  the  shutter.  At  mid- 
night the  mother  is  awakened  from  her 
troubled  sleep  and  sees  the  shadow  of  a 
man,  and  then  another  shadow,  and  still 
another.  The  children  shrink  to  the  back 
of  their  bunk.  Oh,  what  a  triple  crime^ 
was  enacted  under  that  peaceful  sky ! 
Morning  came.  The  mocking-bird  still 
sang,  and  cheered  the  returning  husband. 


THE  SOUTH  IN  SPRINGTIME.  IOI 

But  alas,  it  was  a  mocking1  song  for  him ; 
for  instead  of  pleasant  welcomes,  he  found 
his  wife  delirious,  and  his  children  cower- 
ing like  hunted  partridges  in  a  neighbor's 
house.  The  frenzied  husband,  soon  joined 
by  friends  made  furious  by  the  atrocious 
crime  (so  common  in  the  South),  soon 
hunted  the  ravishers  of  the  little  home; 
and  when  the  moon  arose  the  next  night, 
the  beauty  of  the  scene  was  marred  by 
three  black  corpses  swinging  from  a 
bridge. 


IO2      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

X. 

THE    NORTH-WEST. 

THE  first  impression  a  man  has  of  the 
North-west  is  like  Pat's  in  St.  Patrick's 
Cathedral,  —  "  Begorra,  it's  bigger  inside 
than  out." 

Take  the  map,  and  see  what  a  little 
thin  strip  the  upper  peninsula  of  Michigan 
makes.  Now  start  on  the  best  train  at  St. 
Ignace  in  the  morning,  and'  it  is  eight  at 
night  before  you  reach  the  copper*  re- 
gions or  the  Gogebic  Range.  When  I 
lived  in  St.  Ignace,  and  the  connections 
were  poor,  it  took  two  days  to  travel 
from  that  port  to  Calumet.  If  we  went 
by  water  we  had  to  sail  forty  miles  east 
before  we  doubled  Point  Detour ;  and 
then  we  threaded  our  way  among  scenes 
of  beauty  equal  to  the  Thousand  Islands 
of  the  St.  Lawrence.  Every  mile  of  the 
way  is  alive  with  historic  interest.  In 


THE  NORTH-WEST.  103 

St.  Ignace  lie  the  bones  of  Father 
Marquette  ;  across  the  Straits,  Mack- 
inaw City,  where  the  terrible  massacre  oc- 
curred, spoken  of  by  Parkman  ;  midway, 
is  Mackinaw  Island,  called  by  the  In- 
dians The  Great  Turtle. 

Here  to-day  on  the  Island  are  the  old 
block  forts,  and  here  the  little  iron  safe  in 
which  John  Jacob  Astor  kept  his  money 
when  in  the  fur-trade.  Full  of  natural 
beauty,  to-day  the  past  and  present  crowd 
one  another.  Here  are  Indians,  half- 
breeds,  and  Americans,  and  modern  hotels. 
There  are  no  mosquitoes ;  for  the  Island 
is  but  three  miles  in  diameter,  and  the 
wind  blows  too  strong  for  them.  Here 
you  may  find  the  lilac  in  full  bloom  on 
the  Fourth  of  July,  and  in  the  fall  deli- 
cious blue  plums  that  have  not  been  hurt 
by  the  black  knot.  The  daylight  is 
nearly  eighteen  hours  long  in  midsum- 
mer. The  people  are  sowing  oats  when 
the  southern  farmers  in  the  State  are 
thinking  of  cutting  theirs.  In  April, 
near  Grand  Rapids,  I  picked  the  arbutus. 


104      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

In  early  May,  at  Vanderbilt,  I  picked  it 
again,  and  saw  pure  white  snow  in 
patches  in  the  woods.  Later  in  May  I 
saw  it  again  north  of  the  Straits  of  Mack- 
inaw, and  in  June  I  found  it  in  the  Ke- 
weenak  Peninsula.  At  Hancock  I  saw  a 
foot  of  snow  compressed  under  the  cord- 
wood,  and  some  between  buildings  not 
exposed  to  the  sun.  On  account  of  the 
lateness  of  the  season,  pease  escape  the 
bugs,  which  are  elsewhere  so  destructive ; 
and  thousands  of  bushels  of  seed  are 
sent  every  year  to  the  upper  Peninsula. 
But  to  return  to  St.  Ignace.  It  is  so 
unlike  any  other  American  town,  that  I  did 
not  wonder  at  an  old  lady  of  over  ninety, 
who  was  born  there,  speaking  of  her  visit 
to  Detroit  as  the  time  when  she  went  to 
the  States.  Here  the  old  Catholic  church 
dates  back  to  the  early  days  of  French 
settlement.  The  lots  run  from  the  water- 
front back.  Your  Frenchman  must  have 
a  water-front,  no  matter  how  narrow.  So 
the  town  was  four  miles  long,  and  com- 
posed mostly  of  one  street,  which  fol- 


THE  NORTH-WEST.  1 05 

lowed  the  water-front ;  and  although  there 
were  four  thousand  people  living  there  in 
1884,  and  we  had  a  mayor,  the  primeval 
forest  came  right  into  the  city. 

The  only  house  I  could  get  was  new, 
—  so  new  that  we  moved  in  while  the 
floors  were  still  wet.  The  lumber  in  it 
was  green,  and  we  could  not  open  the 
sashes  for  months;  but  before  winter 
came,  the  shrinkage  caused  the  windows 
to  rattle  like  castanets.  To  get  our  fur- 
niture there,  we  had  to  cross  the  railway 
tracks  twice,  —  once  the  regular  road,  and 
then  the  branch  which  ran  to  the  great 
furnace  at  the  point.  And  yet  so  new 
was  everything  in  this  old  town,  that 
our  street  had  not  been  graded,  and 
our  wagons  had  to  cross  land  where  they 
sunk  up  to  the  axles.  A  few  miles  up 
the  road  the  deer,  the  wolves,  and  black 
bear  lived ;  and  no  less  than  eleven  deer 
were  seen  in  the  road  at  one  time  near 
Allenville.  We  moved  in  the  month  of 
June,  and  put  up  our  base-burner,  and 
started  the  fire. 


IO6       MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE  FRONTIER. 

The  climate  is  delicious  from  June  to 
October ;  the  air  and  waters  are  as  clear 
as  crystal.  You  can  see  fish  forty  feet  be- 
low you,  and  the  color  of  the  pebbles  at 
the  bottom.  There  is  an  indescribable 
beauty  about  these  northern  shores ;  the 
tender  green  of  the  larch-fir,  or  tamarack, 
the  different  shades  of  blue-green  among 
the  cedars,  the  spruce,  hemlock,  and  bal- 
sam, mixed  with  the  lovely  birch,  and 
multi-colored  rocks,  make  up  some  of  the 
loveliest  scenery  on  the  continent.  Little 
islands,  so  small  that  but  one  or  two  trees 
can  find  root,  up  to  the  islands  that  take 
hours  to  steam  by,  while  the  streams  team 
with  trout  and  grayling,  the  lakes  with 
white-fish,  muskalonge,  and  mackinaw 
trout  and  herring.  Thousands  of  men 
are  engaged  in  the  fisheries,  and  millions 
of  dollars  are  invested. 

You  sit  at  your  door,  and  can  see  the 
home  and  people  of  old  France,  with 
their  primitive .  canoe,  and  at  the  same 
time  see  propellers  of  three  thousand  tons' 
burden  glide  stately  by. 


A   BRAND  NEW  WOODS    VILLAGE.        IO/ 

XI. 

A  BRAND  NEW  WOODS  VILLAGE. 

IT  does  not  take  long  to  build  a  new 
village  on  the  prairie,  —  the  hardest  work, 
the  clearing  of  the  ground,  is  already 
done  ;  but  here  in  the  dense  forest  it  is 
a  different  thing,  even  when  the  rail- 
way runs  through  it.  First  the  men  go 
in,  and  begin  to  clear  the  ground.  It 
is  virgin  soil,  and  not  an  inch  of  ground 
but  has  something  growing.  Giant  maples 
—  some  of  them  bird's-eye,  some  curly  — 
are  cut  down  and  made  into  log  heaps  ; 
black  walnuts  are  burned  up,  that,  made 
into  veneer,  would  bring  thousands  of 
dollars. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  within 
twelve  years.  To-day  it  is  different.  The 
settler  will  take  a  quarter  section,  bark 
the  trees  to  find  the  desired  kind,  cut 
them  down,  and  leave  for  another  section. 


108       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

Rich  companies  came  in,  and  began  to 
devastate  the  forests  to  make  charcoal, 
until  the  State  had  to  make  a  law  that 
only  a  certain  number  of  acres  in  the 
hundred  may  be  cut. 

In  some  few  cases  women  will  go  with 
their  husbands,  and  sometimes  one  woman 
will  find  herself  miles  and  miles  away 
from  another.  I  visited  one  such  house  ; 
and  while  the  good  woman  was  getting 
the  dinner  ready,  I  strolled  about  and  took 
notes.  On  the  rude  mantel-shelf,  I  saw 
some  skulls,  and  asked  what  kind  of  an 
animal  they  belonged  to.  She  said, — 

"Oh!  them's  beavers'  skulls.  My!  I 
wish  we  had  some  beavers  here  now  ;  I 
would  make  you  some  beaver-tail  soup." 

"  Why,  did  you  have  them  here  since 
you  came  ?  " 

"Oh,  yes!  plenty  of  them.  When  I 
got  lonesome  —  and  that  was  pretty  much 
every  day  —  I  used  to  go  and  watch  them 
build  their  dams.  I  don't  know  how  they 
did  it ;  but  I  have  seen  them  sink  a 
log  so  that  it  would  stay  put,  and  not 


A   BRAND   NEW   WOODS    VILLAGE.       IOQ 

come  up.  I  tried  it  dozens  of  times,  but 
could  not  do  it.  I  had  lots  of  time, 
nothing  to  read,  and  the  nearest  town 
fifteen  miles  away.  I  used  to  think  I 
should  go  mad  sometimes,  and  even  a 
land-hunter  coming  from  outside  was  a 
godsend.  Indeed,  I  remember  one  com- 
ing here,  and  he  took  sick,  and  died  in 
spite  of  all  we  could  do.  We  had  neither 
boards  nor  planks,  nothing  but  logs.  So 
we  slipped  two  flour-barrels  over  him, 
and  he  looked  real  nice.  We  buried  a 
little  boy  too.  I  keep  the  graves  clear 
of  weeds,  and  plant  flowers  about  them, 
and  often  sit  there  with  my  work  and 
think  of  those  early  days." 

"  How  long  ago  was  that  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Four  years  ago !  Why,  you  know 
there  wan't  no  railway  then ;  but  now, 
—  why,  I  got  Zeke  to  cut  down  the  trees, 
and  I  can  see  the  trains  go  by  with 
parlor  cars  and  sleepers.  There'll  be  one 
pretty  soon  if  it  is  on  time."  And  sure 
enough,  in  a  few  minutes  a  long  train 
thundered  by. 


IIO      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

Sometimes  a  train  stopped  near  us, 
and  hundreds  of  men  from  the  south  of 
Ohio  came  with  their  dogs,  guns,  and 
men-servants,  and  went'  hunting  and  fish- 
ing ;  and,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  you 
can  find  ten  times  as  many  deer  to-day 
as  you  could  forty  years  ago.  The  set- 
tling of  new  lands  has  driven  them  into 
closer  quarters,  and  the  game-law  does 
much  good.  The  State  fish-hatcheries 
supply  the  streams  with  fry  ;  and  at  times 
the  men  sent  out  to  stock  the  streams  get 
misled  by  the  settlers,  who  show  them 
the  different  streams,  and  only  too  late 
they  find  they  have  put  the  whole  stock 
of  young  fry  into  the  same  stream.  The 
average  conscience  is  not  yet  fine  enough 
to  see  anything  but  a  joke  in  this. 

But  to  the  building  of  our  village. 
Often  at  first  no  house  has  more  than  one 
room.  The  men  are  making  their  homes, 
and  will  stop  to  cut  out  a  piece  of  the 
log,  and  make  a  place  for  a  little  child's 
doll.  Cupboards,  too,  are  made  in  the 
same  way. 


A   BRAND   NEW   WOODS    VILLAGE.        Ill 

Water  is  one  of  the  indispensable  neces- 
sities ;  and,  as  a  rule,  the  town  will  be 
built  on  a  stream,  or  near  a  spring. 
Sometimes  wells  have  to  be  dug  over  a 
hundred  feet  deep.  Arrow-heads,  and  im- 
plements of  the  chase,  and  bones  of  men 
and  extinct  races  of  animals,  turn  up. 

In  one  town  I  visited,  before  the  wells 
were  dug,  the  water  for  drinking  was 
brought  in  barrels  on  flat  cars,  while 
melted  snow  answered  for  washing. 

"  But  what  did  you  do  when  that  was 
gone  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Well,  the  maple-sap  begun  to  run, 
and  then  the  birch,  which  was  better ; 
but  lor!  you  couldn't  iron  nothin'." 

I  passed  a  little  log  house  standing 
out  of  line  with  the  street;  and  I  thought 
it  was  a  chicken-coop,  and  asked  why  it 
was  built  that  way. 

"  My !  "  said  the  woman  with  a  laugh, 
"that  ain't  a  chicken-coop;  that's  our 
first  meeting-house.  Us  women  built  that. 
We  had  one  or  two  old  men  to  help,  and 
the  children  ;  and  we  women  did  the  rest. 


112      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

We  were  quite  proud  of  it  too.  It  cost 
fourteen  dollars  complete.  For  the  min- 
ister's chair  we  cut  down  a  barrel,  and 
covered  it  with  green  baize." 

A  minister  writes,  "  My  room  is  one 
end  of  the  garret  of  a  log  house,  where 
I  can  barely  stand  erect  under  the  ridge- 
pole. My  study-table  and  bookcase  I 
made  from  rough  boards.  As  I  sit  writ- 
ing, I  look  forth  from  a  window  two  by 
three,  upon  a  field  dotted  with  stumps, 
log  huts,  and  charcoal  kilns,  and  skirted 
with  dense  forests." 

While  I  was  visiting  this  section,  a 
woman  showed  me  her  hands  cracked 
with  the  frost.  The  tears  came  to  her 
eyes  as  she  said,  "  I  tell  ye  it's  pretty 
hard  lines  to  have  to  milk  cows  when  it 
is  forty  below  zero."  No  man  can  im- 
agine the  arduous  work  and  the  awful- 
ness  of  life  in  a  northern  winter.  What 
is  a  joy  to  the  well-dressed,  well-fed 
man,  with  his  warm  house  and  the  com- 
forts of  a  civilized  community,  is  often 
death  to  the  poor  minute-man  and  set- 


A   BRAND   NEW  WOODS    VILLAGE.        113 

tier  on  the  frontier.  I  have  sat  by  the 
side  of  the  minute-man,  and  heard  from 
him  a  story  that  would  bring  tears  to 
the  eyes  of  the  most  cynical. 

One  man  I  shall  never  forget,  a  good 
hardy  Scotchman,  with  a  brave  little  wife 
and  four  children.  His  field  was  near 
Lake  Superior ;  his  flock  poor  home- 
steaders and  Indians.  The  winters  have 
a  hundred  and  fifty  days'  sleighing  ;  the 
frost  sometimes  reaches  50°  below  zero, 
and  is  often  for  days  together  30°  below ; 
so  that  when  it  suddenly  rises  to  zero,  one 
can  hardly  believe  it  is  freezing.  Here 
is  his  story  :  — 

"We  were  twelve  miles  from  a  doc- 
tor ;  and  towards  spring  two  of  our  chil- 
dren complained  of  sore  throats.  It 
proved  to  be  diphtheria.  We  used  all 
the  remedies  we  had,  and  also  some 
herbs  given  us  by  an  old  squaw ;  but 
the  children  grew  worse,  and  we  deter- 
mined to  go  back  to  the  old  settlement. 
My  wife  carried  the  youngest,  and  I  the 
next  one.  The  other  children  walked 


114      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

behind,  their  little  legs  getting  scratched 
with  the  briers.  We  had  twelve  miles 
to  go  to  reach  the  steamer.  When  we 
got  there,  one  of  the  little  ones  died ; 
and  before  -we  reached  home  the  other 
expired.  We  buried  our  two  treasures 
among  the  friends  in  the  cemetery ;  and 
after  a  while  I  said  to  my  wife, — 

"'Shall  we  go  back  to  the  field? 
Ought  we  to  go?' 

"Her  answer  was,  'Yes.' 

"We  went  back.  Our  old  parishioners 
were  delighted  to  see  us ;  and  soon  we 
were  hard  at  work  again.  Winter  came 
on,  and  God  gave  us  another  little  one. 
You  may  be  sure  he  had  a  double  wel- 
come ;  but  as  the  cold  became  intense, 
our  little  lamb  showed  signs  of  follow- 
ing his  brothers.  I  tried  to  keep  my 
wife's  spirits  up,  while  I  went  about  my 
work  dazed.  At  last  the  little  fellow's 
eyes  seemed  so  large  for  his  face,  and 
he  would  look  at  us  so  pitifully,  that  I 
would  break  down  in  spite  of  myself. 

"  He  died ;  and  the  ground  was  frozen 


A   BRAND   NEW   WOODS    VILLAGE.        115 

over  six  feet  deep,  and  we  had  to  bury 
him  in  a  deep  snow-bank  that  nearly 
covered  our  little  shanty.  My  wife  would 
go  out  nights  when  she  could  hear  the 
wolves  howling,  and  stand  with  an  old 
Paisley  shawl  over  her  head,  while  I  was 
miles  away  preaching  to  a  handful  of 
settlers  in  a  log  cabin ;  and  when  I 
would  return  I  would  find  her  there 
keeping  watch,  and  sometimes  I  would 
have  hard  work  to  get  her  into  the 
house.  Pardon  these  tears,  my  brother, 
but  come  they  will." 

He  need  not  have  said  it ;  my  own 
were  running,  though  my  head  was  turned 
away. 

Yes,  we  weep,  and  hold  on  to  our 
money,  while  brave  men  and  women,  with 
their  little  ones,  suffer  for  the  lack  of  it, 
and  lay  down  their  lives  for  those  who 
come  after  them.  How  men  and  women 
can  live  in  fine  homes,  and  spend  ten 
times  as  much  on  luxuries  as  they  give 
to  the  Lord,  and  still  sing  they  love  his 
kingdom,  is  more  than  I  can  understand 


Il6       MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE  FRONTIER. 

—  except  it  be  they  don't  mean  what 
they  sing. 

The  first  thing  one  notices  after  pass- 
ing the  great  iron  dock  are  the  odd  names 
on  some  of  the  signs.  There  is  the 

o 

''Golden  Rule"  livery  stable,  with  its 
attendant  saloon.  On  its  left,  quaintly 
linking  the  past  with  the  present,  is  an 
old  log  house,  built  in  past  century  style, 
with  its  logs  hewn,  tongued,  and  grooved, 
but  used  at  present  as  a  printing-office, 
with  the  latest  style  of  presses.  One  can 
easily  imagine  the  time  when  beside  its 
huge  fireplace  the  half-breed  and  the 
Indian  squatted,  smoked  their  pipes,  and 
told  their  stones ;  for  it  is  not  four  years 
since  that  was  so.  Outside,  nailed  to  the 
logs,  is  a  coon-skin,  and  underneath  it 
the  legend,  "  Hard  Cider."  From  this 
primitive  place  issues  the  democratic  Free 
Press.  A  little  farther  on,  and  we  no- 
tice "  Dr.  ,  horse  doctor  and  saloon 

keeper."  A  very  few  more  steps  brings 
us  to  the  Home  Saloon,  the  Mansion 
House,  the  Clarendon,  and  the  Young 
Canadian. 


A   BRAND   NEW   WOODS    VILLAGE.        1 1/ 

Besides  these,  there  are  twenty  other 
saloons,  with  and  without  names  ;  you 
will  not  be  surprised  when  I  tell  you  that, 
on  my  first  visit  here,  I  found  a  poor  man 
had  cut  his  throat  after  a  heavy  spree. 
The  shame  he  felt  at  the  thought  of  meet- 
ing1 wife  and  children  (who  were  on  their 
way,  expecting  to  find  a  home)  was  too 
much  for  him,  and  hence  suicide.  So 
when  wife  and  little  ones  arrived  they 
found  only  a  dying  husband  and  father. 

Not  long  after  this  a  young  man,  the 
only  support  of  his  parents,  went  out 
into  the  dark  night  from  a  dance,  dazed 
with  drink.  He  fell  on  the  track,  and 
the  morning  express  crushed  him  to 
death.  Brother  Newberry,  going  to  con- 
dole with  the  parents,  found  the  poor 
father  bedridden  by  an  accident,  and  the 
mother,  who  was  furious  with  drink,  held 
by  two  men.  Down  on  the  dock,  one 
evening,  a  poor  man  fell  into  the  lake. 
He  had  been  drinking  to  drown  his  sor- 
rows (a  man  having  run  away  with  his 
wife).  The  bystanders,  among  whom  was 


Il8      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

his  own  son,  seemed  stupidly  indifferent 
to  his  fate ;  and  when  they  did  arouse 
themselves  it  was  only  to  bring  up  his 
dead  body.  This  they  laid  in  the  freight 
shed,  while  the  son  went  coolly  to  work 
on  a  vessel  close  by,  and  brutal  men 
made  jests  of  the  misery  of  the  dead 
man's  married  life. 

To  give  you  an  idea  of  the  zest  with 
which  the  liquor  traffic  is.  carried  on, -let 
me  say  that  three  days  after  the  ferry- 
boat "Algomah"  was  stuck  fast  in  the 
ice-drift,  and  while  it  was  yet  dangerous 
to  cross  the  strait  by  sleigh,  a  saloon 
was  built  on  the  ice  about  a  mile  from 
shore  to  catch  the  teamsters  as  they 
passed  with  freight.  When  I  saw  it  five 
days  later,  it  had  been  removed  nearer 
the  shore  ;  so  that  it  was  built  and  taken 
down  and  put  up  again  all  within  a 
week. 

But  come  with  me  out  of  so  baneful  an 
atmosphere.  Let  us  cross  the  Strait  of 
Mackinaw  on  the  ice  by  moonlight.  What 
a  scene  !  It  is  a  wild  midnight,  the  moon 


A   BRAND   NEW   WOODS    VILLAGE.        119 

at  the  full,  a  light  snow  falling ;  and  al- 
though it  is  here  only  six  miles  to  the 
other  side,  you  cannot  see  the  shore,  as 
the  snow  thickens.  There  are  miles  upon 
miles  of  ice,  driven  by  the  fierce  gale, 
sometimes  into  the  depths,  again  mount- 
ing the  crest  of  some  mighty  billow, 
groaning  and  cracking  up  into  all  shapes 
and  sizes,  swirling  as  if  in  some  giant 
whirlpool,  transfixed  and  left  in  all  its 
awful  confusion.  It  is  orlitterin«f  with 

o  o 

beauty  to-night ;  yet  so  wild,  so  weird,  so 
awfully  grand  and  solemn,  that  we  invol- 
untarily repeat,  "  Lord,  what  is  man  that 
thou  art  mindful  of  him  ? " 

The  sleighs  look,  in  the  distance,  like 
a  little  clog-train.  Now  you  are  gliding 
over  a  mile  of  ice,  smooth  as  glass,  while 
all  around  it  is  heap  upon  heap ;  then 
you  pass  through  gaps  cut  by  the  road- 
makers,  who  have  left  little  pine-trees  to 
guide  you  ;  and  though  the  ice  in  places 
is  packed  thirty  feet  deep,  you  feel  a 
sense  of  comfort  and  safety  as  you  pass 
from  the  bleak  sweep  of  the  wind  into 


120      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

the  thick  cedars  on  the  shore,  and  nestle 
down  as  if  in  the  shadow  of  His  wing. 

The  next  crossing"  is  by  early  morn. 
The  sun  comes  cheerily  up  from  out  a 
great  cloud  of  orange  and  vermilion,  while 
here  and  there  are  crimson  clots  and  deep 
indigo-colored  clouds  rolling  off  to  follow 
the  night.  I  cannot  describe  the  beauty 
of  this  scene  ;  that  needs  a  poet ;  but  I 
can  tell  you  of  the  odd  side.  Away  we 
go  behind  two  Indian  ponies,  snorting  and 
prancing  as  if  they,  too,  enjoyed  the  beauty 
of  the  scene.  But  look  !  not  forty  yards 
away  is  the  "  Algomah."  After  being  res- 
urrected from  the  ice  with  dynamite,  she 
has  begun  her  regular  trips.  Bravely  she 
ploughs  through  two  feet  of  blue  ice  ; 
and  when  she  comes  to  the  high  ridges 
backs  up  and  charges  them  again  and 
again.  After  hours  of  faithful  work,  she 
makes  St.  Ignace  after  sundown,  seven 
miles  from  the  spot  she  left  at  sunrise. 

You  will  not  be  surprised,  perhaps,  to 
find  your  missionary  from  Northern  Michi- 
gan turning  up  at  Olivet,  Southern  Michi- 


A    BRAND   NEW   WOODS    VILLAGE.        121 

gan  where  the  Lord  graciously  baptized 
the  meetings  with  his  Holy  Spirit.  I 
collected  seventy-two  dollars  towards  a 
little  church,  to  be  called  Olivet  Chapel ; 
and,  better  still,  quite  a  number  decided 
to  be  Christians.  Best  of  all,  thirteen 
young  Christian  students  gave  therii- 
selves  to  God,  and  will  be  ready  when 
the  time  comes  for  the  work  of  Chris- 
tian missions. 

At  Ann  Harbor  I  was  most  cordially 
welcomed  by  Brother  Ryder  and  his 
church,  and  received  from  them  hopeful 
assurance  of  help  for  our  church  at  Sugar 
Island ;  so  the  time  was  not  thrown  away 
in  going  South.  At  Newberry,  Brother 
Curry  has  been  offered  the  use  of  the 
new  church  built  by  Mrs.  Newberry  of 
Detroit.  So  the  Lord  is  opening  the  way. 
If  we  could  only  get  one  or  two  of  those 
ministers  who  were  seen  "out  West" 
sitting  on  the  four  posts  of  the  newly 
surveyed  town,  waiting  to  build  churches, 
we  could  furnish  parishes  already  inhab- 
ited. Seney,  Grand  Marais,  Point  De- 


122        MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

tour,  Drummond  Island,  and  many  more, 
are  growing,  with  no  churches. 

The  last  time  I  visited  Detour,  a  large 
mill  had  been  finished  and  was  running. 
The  owners  would  give  a  lot,  and  help 
build  a  church.  There  are  some  good 
people  living  there.  They  gave  me  a  cor- 
dial welcome  and  the  best  bed.  I  was  very 
tired  the  first  night  and  slept  soundly; 
so  I  was  surprised  in  the  morning  when 
the  lady  asked  me  if  I  was  disturbed.  On 
my  saying  "No,"  she  said  that  on  account 
of  the  rats  her  husband  had  to  pull  up 
the  ladder,  as  they  were  sleeping  on 
shakedowns  ;  but  she  was  glad  I  was  not 
disturbed.  The  next  night  they  kindly 
lent  me  a  little  black-and-tan  terrier  ;  so 
I  slept,  was  refreshed,  and  started  for 
home,  promising  I  would  send  a  mission- 
ary as  soon  as  possible. 


OUT-OF-THE-WAY  PLACES.  12$ 

XII. 

OUT-OF-THE-WAY    PLACES. 

IN  making1  a  visit  to  one  Home  Mis- 
sionary, I  found  him  living  in  a  little  board 
house,  battened  on  the  outside,  but  de- 
void of  plaster.  His  study-table  was  a 
large  dry-goods  box,  near  the  cook-stove, 
and  on  it,  among  other  things,  a  type- 
writer. It  looked  somewhat  incongruous  ; 
and  on  mentioning  this,  the  good  brother 
said,  "Oh  that  is  nothing;  wait  until  it 
is  dark  and  I  will  shov^you  something 
else." 

And  sure  enough,  soon  after  supper 
he  hung  up  a  sheet,  and  gave  me  quite 
an  elaborate  entertainment  with  the  help 
of  a  stereopticon.  It  seemed  very  strange 
to  be  seated  in  this  little  shell  of  a  house, 
in  such  a  new  town  among  the  pine 
stumps ;  and  I  could  hardly  realize  my 
position  as  I  sat  gazing  at  the  beau- 


124      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

tiful  scenes  which  were  flashed  upon  the 
sheet. 

Across  the  road  was  a  dance-house  ;  and 
we  could  hear  the  scraping  of  the  fiddler, 
the  loud  voice  calling  off  the  dances,  and 
the  heavy  thump  of  the  dancers  in  their 
thick  boots.  Afterwards  the  missionary 
gave  me  a  short  account  of  his  trials  and 
victories  on  coming  to  the  new  field,  and 
it  illustrates  how  God  opens  the  way  when 
to  all  human  wisdom  it  seems  closed. 

When  he  tried  to  hire  a  house,  the 
owner  wanted  a  month's  rent  in  advance; 
but  a  short  time  after  called  on  him  and 
gave  him  the  house  and  lot  with  a  clear 
deed  of  the  property  for  one  dollar ! 
At  the  same  time  he  told  him  that  there 
were  lots  of  cedar  posts  in  the  woods 
for  his  garden  fence,  if  he  would  cut 
them,  and  added  that  maybe  some  one 
would  haul  them  for  him.  The  mission- 
ary chopped  the  posts,  "  some  one  "  hauled 
them  for  him,  and  up  went  the  fence. 

The  missionary  felt  so  rich  that  he 
asked  the  price  of  a  fine  cooking-stove 


OUT-OF-THE-WAY  PLACES.  1 25 

that  this  man  had  loaned  him.  "  Oh," 
he  said,  "  I  gave  you  that."  The  next 
thing  was  to  find  a  place  suitable  to  wor- 
ship in  —  often  no  easy  thing  in  a  new 
town.  At  last  a  man  said,  "  You  can 
have  the  old  boarding  -  house."  This 
was  said  with  a  sly  wink  at  the  men 
standing  by.  So  into  the  old  log  house 
went  our  friend,  with  his  wife  ;  and  after 
a  day's  work  with  hoe,  shovel,  and  white- 
wash, the  place  was  ready.  The  white- 
wash was  indispensable ;  for  though  the 
men  had  deserted  it,  there  was  still  a 
great  deal  of  life  in  it. 

When  the  men  saw  the  earnestness  of 
the  missionary  they  turned  in  and  helped 
him,  and  became  his  friends  ;  and  in  the 
old  log  boarding-house  were  heard  the 
songs  of  praise  instead  of  ribaldry,  and 
prayers  instead  of  curses,  while  Bibles 
and  Sunday-school  leaflets  took  the  place 
of  the  Police  Gazette. 

The  other  field  in  which  this  brother 
works  would  delight  Dr.  Gladden's  heart : 
350  people,  17  denominations,  all  "moth- 


126      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

ered "  by  a  Congregational  church  ;  and 
I  don't  know  of  another  church  under 
the  sun  that  could  brood  such  a  medley 
under  its  wings.  When  the  church  was 
building,  one  might  have  seen  a  Metho- 
dist brother  with  a  load  of  boards,  a 
Presbyterian  hauling  the  shingles,  a  Bap- 
tist with  some  foundation-stones,  and  a 
Mormon  hewing  the  sills  —  not  a  Mor- 
mon of  the  "  Latter-Day  swindle  variety," 
though,  but  a  Josephite.  In  this  place 
our  brother  had  many  a  trial,  however, 
before  getting  his  conglomerate  together. 
The  head  man  of  the  village  offered  to 
give  a  lot  if  the  church  would  buy  anoth- 
er ;  and  in  the  meanwhile  his  charge  was 
five  dollars  each  time  they  used  the  hall. 
But  the  next  time  our  brother  went,  the 
man  gave  both  the  lots ;  the  next  time,  he 
said  he  would  not  charge  for  the  hall ;  and 
finally  he  gave  the  lumber  for  the  church. 
The  church  was  finished,  and  a  good  par- 
sonage added  ;  and  to-day  fashionable 
summer  resorters  sit  under  its  shadow, 
and  never  dream  of  the  wild  lawlessness 
that  once  reigned  there. 


O  UT-  OF-  THE-  IV A  Y  PL  A  CES.  1 2  7 

The  next  new  place  I  visited  was  w'ell 
out  into  Lake  Michigan,  and  yet  shel- 
tered by  high  bluffs  clothed  with  a  rich 
growth  of  forest  trees,  so  that,  notwith- 
standing its  northern  latitude,  six  degrees 
below  zero  was  the  lowest  the  mercury 
reached,  up  to  the  middle  of  February. 
This  is  saying  much  in  favor  of  its  winter 
climate,  when  we  consider  the  fact  that 
in  the  rest  of  the  State  it  has  often  been 
from  zero  down  to  forty  below  for  nearly 
a  month  at  a  time. 

I  do  not  remember  such  another  month 
in  years,  —  wind,  snow,  fires,  intense  cold, 
and  disease,  all  combined.  However,  in 
spite  of  everything,  the  people  turned  out 
remarkably  well,  and  I  managed  to  preach 
twenty-eight  times,  besides  giving  talks  to 
the  children. 

It  took  twelve  hours  of  hard  driving  to 
make  the  forty  miles  between  home  and 
the  appointment,  and  we  were  only  just  in 
time  for  the  services.  I  was  surprised 
to  see  the  number  present  ;  but  what 
looked  to  me  like  impassable  drifts  were 


128      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

nothing  to  people  who  had  sat  on  the 
top  of  the  telegraph-poles,  and  walked  in 
the  up-stairs  windows  off  from  a  snow- 
bank, as  they  actually  did  four  winters 
previously.  The  church  here  has  a  good 
building,  heated  with  a  furnace,  and  owns 
a  nice  parsonage  where  the  minister  lives 
with  his  wife  and  four  children.  Although 
it  stormed  every  day  but  one,  the  meet- 
ings were  blessed  by  the  conversion  of 
some,  and  the  church  rejoiced  with  a  new 
spirit  for  work. 

I    next   visited    E ,  a    place    seven 

years  old,  which  ran  up  to  fifteen  hundred 
inhabitants  in  the  first  three  years  of  its 
existence.  It  had  about  twelve  hundred 
inhabitants,  and  ours  was  the  only  church- 
building  in  the  place.  When  the  pastor 
first  came,  there  was  neither  church  to 
worship  in  nor  house  to  live  in,  save  an 
old  shingle  shanty  into  which  they  went. 
It  was  so  close  to  the  railway  that  it 
required  constant  care  in  the  daytime  to 
keep  the  children  safe,  and  not  a  little 
watching  at  night  to  keep  the  rough  char- 


O  UT-OF-  THE-  WA  Y  PL  A  CES.  1 29 

acters  out.  Quite  a  change  for  the  better 
has  taken  place,  and  a  bell  now  rings  each 
night  at  nine  o'clock  to  warn  saloons  to 
close. 

It  was  a  hard  winter,  and  the  storms 
came  thicker  than  ever,  blockading  all 
railways,  and  making  the  walking  almost 
impossible.  Service  on  the  first  evening 
after  the  storm  was  out  of  the  question, 
and  for  days  after  the  walks  were  like  little 
narrow  sheep  tracks.  There  are  a  great 
many  things  to  contend  with  in  these  new 
mill  towns  under  the  best  of  circumstan- 
ces ;  but  when  you  add  to  the  saloons  and 
worse  places,  the  roller  skating-rink,  a  big 
fire,  and  diphtheria,  you  have  some  idea 
of  the  odds  against  which  we  worked. 

In  two  places  I  visited,  a  fire  broke 
out ;  and  one  could  not  but  notice  the 
ludicrous  side  in  the  otherwise  terrible 
calamity  that  a  fire  causes  in  these  little 
wooden  towns  in  winter.  The  stores, 
built  close  together,  look  like  rows  of 
mammoth  dry-goods  boxes.  When  once 
fire  gets  a  start,  they  crackle  and  curl  up 


I3O      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

like  pasteboard.  At  one  fire  a  man  care- 
fully carried  a  sash  nearly  a  block,  and  then 
pitched  it  upon  a  pile  of  cordwood,  smash- 
ing every  pane.  Others  were  throwing 
black  walnut  chairs  and  tables  out  of  the 
upper  story ;  while  I  saw  another  throwing 
out  a  lamp-glass,  crying  out  as  he  did  so, 
"  Here  comes  a  lamp-glass !  "  as  if  it  were 
a  meritorious  action  that  deserved  notice. 
At  the  other  fire  I  saw  a  man  wandering 

o 

aimlessly  about  with  a  large  paper  adver- 
tisement for  some  kind  of  soap,  while  the 
real  article  was  burning  up.  I  could  not 
but  think  how  like  the  worldling  he  was 
—  intent  upon  his  body  and  minor  things 
while  his  soul  was  in  danger  ;  and  also  how 
like  is  the  frantic  mismanagement  at  the 
breaking  out  of  a  fire  to  the  sudden  call  of 
death  to  a  man  in  his  sins.  To  add  to 
the  misery  of  these  houseless  people  dur- 
ing this  intense  cold,  diphtheria  was  car- 
rying off  its  victims,  so  that  the  schools 
were  closed  for  the  second  time  that  win- 
ter. These  things  were  used  readily  as 
excuses  by  those  who  did  not  wish  to 


O  UT-OF-  THE-  IV A  Y  PL  A  CES.  1 3  I 

attend  the  meetings.  Yet  the  skating- 
rink  was  in  full  blast.  But  with  all  these 
impediments,  the  conversions  in  the  meet- 
ings, and  the  quickening  of  the  church  to 
more  active  life,  more  than  repaid  for  all 
the  trouble  and  disappointment. 

We  often  hear  of  "the  drink  curse"  in 
these  places,  and  it  is  not  exaggerated  ; 
but  there  is  one  crime  in  these  new  towns 
of  the  north  that  to  my  mind  is  worse, 
and  a  greater  barrier  to  the  conversion 
of  men  and  women.  It  is  licentiousness. 
One  little  place  not  far  from  where  I  was 
preaching  boasts  of  not  having  a  single 
family  in  it  that  is  not  living  openly  in 
this  sin.  Although  this  is  the  worst  I 
ever  heard  of,  it  is  too  true  that  our 
woods  towns  are  thus  honeycombed. 

About  the  only  hope  the  missionary 
has  in  many  cases  is  in  the  children,  even 
though  he  begins,  as  did  one  pastor  that  I 
know  of,  with  two  besides  his  own.  He 
started  his  school  in  a  deserted  log  shanty 
where  it  grew  to  be  forty  strong,  and  in 
spite  of  obstacles  it  grew.  It  was  hard 


132      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

work  sometimes,  when  the  instinct  of  the 
boy  would  show  itself  in  the  pleasures  of 
insect  hunting  with  a  pin  along  the  log 
seats.  Yet  there  the  missionary's  wife 
sat  and  taught.  They  soon  had  a  nice 
church,  paid  for  within  the  year. 

I  did  not  expect  to  find  within  six  miles 
of  a  large  city  such  a  state  of  things 
as  existed  in  Peter  Cartwright's  time  in 
Michigan,  but  I  did;  and  lest  I  should 
be  called  unfair,  I  will  say  I  found  there 
a  few  of  the  excellent  of  the  earth. 

Let  me  describe  the  meeting-place.  It 
was  in  an  old  hall,  the  floor  humped  up  in 
the  middle  ;  there  was  an  old  cook-stove  to 
warm  it,  while  a  few  lanterns  hung  among 
faded  pine  boughs  gave  out  a  dim  light. 
A  few  seats  without  backs  completed 
the  furniture.  Here  it  was  that  a  good 
brother,  while  preaching,  had  the  front 
and  rear  wheels  of  his  buggy  changed, 
making  rough  riding  over  roads  none  too 
smooth  at  their  best.  Another  from  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  rooms  of  the  neighboring  city 
had  his  buffalo  robes  stolen  and  every 


O  UT-OF-  THE-  WA  Y  PL  A  CES,  1 3  3 

buckle    of   the   harness   undone   while    he 
was  conducting  services. 

Knowing  these  things,  I  was  not  sur- 
prised at  finding  a  rough  old  Roman 
Catholic  Irishman  trying  to  make  a  dis- 
turbance ;  but  a  kind  word  or  two  won  him 
over  to  good  behavior.  Much  less  tract- 
able were  the  young  roughs,  who  reap  all 
the  vices  of  the  city  near  by,  and  get  none 
of  its  virtues.  I  had  to  tell  them  of  the 
rough  places  I  had  seen,  and  that  this  was 
the  first  place  I  had  been  where  the  young 
men  did  not  know  enough  to  behave  them- 
selves in  church.  Promising  without  fail 
to  arrest  the  first  one  that  made  a  dis- 
turbance, I  secured  quiet.  Of  course  I 
had  to  make  friends  with  them  afterwards 
and  shake  hands.  Oh,  how  hard  it  is  to 
preach  the  gospel  after  talking  law  in  that 
fashion  ;  but,  friends,  think  how  much  it 
is  needed.  As  a  little  bit  of  bright  for  so 
black  a  setting,  let  me  say,  that  on  the  sec- 
ond night  some  kind  friends  substituted  a 
box-stove  for  the  cook-stove,  lamps  for  lan- 
terns, and  an  organ  to  help  in  the  praise. 


134      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

XIII. 

COCKLE,    CHESS,    AND    WHEAT. 

RATHER  a  strange  heading !  I  know 
it ;  but  I  have  lost  an  hour  trying  to 
think  of  a  better ;  and  is  not  society  com- 
posed (figuratively  speaking)  of  cockle, 
chess,  and  wheat?  In  old  settled  parts 
and  in  cities  we  see  society  like  wheat 
in  the  bulk.  The  plump  grain  is  on 
top,  but  there  are  cockle  and  chess  at 
the  bottom.  On  the  frontier  the  wheat 
is  spread  on  the  barn  floor,  and  the  chess 
and  cockle  are  more  plainly  seen.  As 
the  fanning-mill  lets  the  wheat  drop  near 
it  and  the  lighter  grains  fly  off,  so  in  the 
great  fanning-mill  of  the  world,  the  good 
are  in  clusters  in  the  towns  and  settled 
country,  while  the  cockle  and  chess  are 
scattered  all  over  the  borders.  Of  course 
in  screenings,  there  is  always  consider- 
able real  wheat,  though  the  grains  are 


COCKLE,    CHESS,    AND    WHEAT.  135 

small.  Under  proper  cultivation,  how- 
ever, these  will  produce  good  wheat. 
These  little  grains  among  the  screenings 
are  the  children,  and  they  are  the  mis- 
sionaries' hope. 

In  my  pastoral  work  I  have  met  with 
all  kinds  of  humanity,  —  here  a  man  living 
a  hermit  life,  in  a  little  shanty  without 
floor  or  windows,  his  face  as  yellow  as 
gold,*  from  opium  ;  there  an  old  man 
doing  chores  in  a  camp,  who  had  been 
a  preacher  for  twenty-five  years  ;  here  a 
graduate  from  an  Eastern  college,  cashier 
of  a  bank  a  little  while  ago,  now  scal- 
ing lumber  when  not  drunk;  occasionally 
one  of  God's  little  ones,  striving  to  let 
his  light  shine  o'er  the  bad  deeds  of  a 
naughty  world. 

It  was  my  custom  for  nearly  a  year  to 
preach  on  a  week- night  in  a  little  village 
near  my  home,  sometimes  to  a  houseful, 
oftener  to  a  handful.  Few  or  many,  I 
noticed  one  man  always  there  ;  no  matter 
how  stormy  or  how  dark  the  night,  I 
would  find  him  among  the  first  arrivals. 


136      MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE   FRONTIER. 

He  lived  farther  from  the  meeting  than 
I,  and  it  was  not  a  pleasant  walk  at  any 
time.  One  was  always  liable  to  meet  a 
gang  of  drunken  river-men  spoiling  for 
a  fight ;  and  there  was  a  trestle  bridge 
eighty  rods  in  length  to  walk  over,  and 
the  ties  in  winter  were  often  covered 
with  snow  and  ice. 

Then  after  reaching  the  schoolhouse  the 
prospect  was  not  enchanting ;  windows 
broken,  snow  on  the  seats,  the  room 
lighted  sometimes  with  nothing  but  lan- 
terns, one  being  hung  under  the  stove- 
pipe. Under  these  circumstances  I 
became  very  much  interested  in  the 
young  man.  He  never  spoke  unless  he 
was  spoken  to,  and  then  his  answers 
were  short,  and  not  over  bright ;  but  as 
he  became  a  regular  attendant  on  all  the 
means  of  grace,  —  Sunday-school,  prayer- 
meetings,  and  the  preaching  of  the  Word, 
—  I  strove  to  bring  him  to  a  knowledge 
of  the  truth,  and  was  much  pleased  one 
evening  to  see  him  rise  for  prayers.  As 
he  showed  by  his  life  and  conversation 


COCKLE,    CHESS,   AND    WHEAT.  137 

that  he  had  met  with  a  change  (he  had 
been  a  drunkard),  he  was  admitted  into 
the  church,  and  some  time  after  was  ap- 
pointed sexton. 

One  night,  on  my  way  to  prayer-meet- 
ing, I  saw  a  dark  object  near  the  church 
which  looked  suspicious.  On  investiga- 
tion it  proved  to  be  our  sexton,  with  his 
face  terribly  disfigured,  and  nearly  blind. 
Some  drunken  ruffian  had  caught  him 
coming  out  of  the  church,  and,  mistaking 
him  for  another  man,  had  beaten  him  and 
left  him  half  dead.  I  took  the  poor  fel- 
low to  the  saloons,  to  show  them  their 
work.  They  did  not  thank  me  for  this ; 
but  we  found  the  man,  and  he  was  "  sent 
up  "  for  ninety  days. 

Soon  after  this  in  my  visits  I  found  a 
new  family,  and  I  wish  I  could  describe 
them.  The  old  grandmother,  weighing 
about  two  hundred  pounds,  was  a  sight, 
—  short,  stocky,  with  piercing  eyes,  and 
hair  as  white  as  wool.  She  welcomed  me 
in  when  she  heard  that  I  was  "  the  min- 
ister," and  brought  out  her  hymn-book, 


138      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

and  had  me  sing  and  pray  with  her.  She 
belonged  to  one  of  the  numerous  sects 
in  Pennsylvania.  She  said  it  was  a  real 
treat  to  her,  as  she  was  too  fleshy  to  get 
to  church,  and  with  her  advancing  years 
found  it  hard  to  walk.  I  found  out  after- 
ward, however,  that  this  did  not  apply 
to  side-shows.  From  her  I  learned  the 
young  man's  history.  He  had  lost  his 
parents  when  young;  but  not  before  they 
had  beaten  his  senses  out,  and  left  him 
nearly  cleaf;  and  he  was  looked  upon 
as  one  not  "  right  sharp."  Afterwards 
he  was  concerned  in  the  murder  of  an 
old  man,  and  was  sent  to  State  prison 
for  life.  He  was  brother  to  the  old 
woman's  daughter-in-law,  an  innocent 
looking  body.  There  were  several  chil- 
dren, bright  as  dollars. 

The  old  lady  informed  me  that  she  had 
another  son  in  town  whom  I  must  visit. 
I  did  so ;  and  found  him  living  with  his 
family  in  a  little  house  (?),  the  front 
of  which  touched  the  edge  of  the  bank, 
the  back  perched  on  two  posts,  with  a 


COCKLE,    CHESS,    AND    WHEAT.  139 

deep  ravine  behind,  where  the  water 
ebbed  and  flowed  as  the  dams  were 
raised  and  lowered.  I  made  some  re- 
marks on  the  unhealthiness  of  the  loca- 
tion ;  and  the  man  said,  "  It's  curious, 
but  you  can  smell  it  stronger  farther 
off  than  you  can  close  by !  "  I  thought, 
what  an  illustration  of  the  insidious  ap- 
proaches of  sin  !  He  was  right,  so  far  as 
the  senses  were  concerned ;  but  his  nose 
had  become  used  to  it.  I  was  not  sur- 
prised to  be  called  soon  after  to  preach  a 
funeral  sermon  there.  One  of  the  daugh- 
ters, a  bright  girl  of  twelve  years,  had 
died  of  malignant  diphtheria.  It  was  a 
piteous  sight.  We  dared  not  use  the 
church,  and  the  house  was  too  small 
to  turn  round  in,  what  with  bedsteads, 
cook-stove,  kitchen-table,  and  coffin.  On 
the  hillside,  with  logs  for  seats,  we  held 
the  service. 

It  was  touching  to  see  the  mute  grief 
of  some  of  the  little  ones ;  one  elder 
sister  could  with  difficulty  be  restrained 
from  kissing  the  dead.  She  was  a  fine 


140      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

girl  in  spite  of  her  surroundings,  and 
in  her  grief,  in  a  moment  of  confidence, 
said  her  uncle  had  murdered  a  man 
down  South,  and  it  preyed  on  her  mind  ; 
but 'she  was  afraid  to  tell  the  authorities, 
for  the  uncle  had  threatened  to  kill  her 
if  she  told.  This  confession  was  made 
to  the  woman  she  was  working  for ;  and 
though  I  did  not  think  it  unlikely,  I 
treated  it  as  gossip.  But  with  the  facts 
related  in  the  former  part  of  this  chapter 
before  me,  I  have  no  doubt  that  she 
spoke  the  truth.  One  murderer  has  gone 
to  meet  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth ;  the 
other  is  in  State  prison  for  life. 

The  cockle  and  chess  are  gone  ;  but 
the  wheat  (the  children)  are  left,  — 
bright,  young,  pliant,  strong,  —  what  shall 
we  do  with  them  ?  Let  them  grow  more 
cockle  instead  of  wheat,  and  chess  in- 
stead of  barley?  Or  shall  they  be  of 
the  wheat  to  be  gathered  into  the  Mas- 
ter's garner?  If  you  desire  the  latter, 
pray  ye  the  Lord  of  the  harvest  that  he 
will  send  more  laborers  into  the  harvest. 


COCKLE,    CHESS,   AND    WHEAT.  141 

I  once  saw  an  old  farmer  in  Canada 
who  offered  ten  dollars  for  every  thistle 
that  could  be  found  on  his  hundred  acres. 
I  have  seen  him  climb  a  fence  to  uproot 
thistles  in  his  neighbor's  field.  When 
asked  why  he  did  that  extra  work,  he 
said,  because  the  seeds  would  fly  over 
to  his  farm.  Was  he  not  a  wise  man  ? 

Perhaps  no  greater  danger  threatens 
our  Republic  to-day  than  the  neglect  of 
the  children  —  millions  of  school  a^e  that 

o 

are  not  in  school,  and  in  the  great  cities 
thousands  who  cannot  find  room.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  we  have  thirty  millions  of 
our  people  not  in  touch  with  the  church  ? 


142      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

XIV. 

CHIPS    FROM    OTHER    LOGS. 

IN  the  Rev.  Harvey  Hyde's  "  Reminis- 
cences of  Early  Days,"  occurs  the  follow- 
ing interesting  notes  :  — 

"In  the  spring  of  1842  I  made  a  horse- 
back journey  across  the  State  (Michigan), 
from  Allegan  to  Saginaw,  up  the  Grand 
River  Valley,  past  where  now  Lansing 
boasts  its  glories,  but  where  then  in  the 
dense  forests  not  a  human  dwelling  was 
to  be  seen  for  many  miles,  on  to  Fen- 
tonville.  Coming  on  Saturday  night  to 
a  lonely  Massachusetts  tavern-keeper,  I 
found  a  hearty  welcome  to  baked  beans 
and  brown  bread,  and  preached  on  the 
Sabbath  in  his  barroom  to  his  assem- 
bled neighbors  —  the  first  minister  ever 
heard  in  the  neighborhood.  Arriving  at 
Saginaw,  after  a  ride  for  miles  through 
swamps,  with  from  six  to  ten  inches  of 


CHIPS  FROM  OTHER  LOGS.  143 

water,  sometimes  covered  with  ice,  at 
the  close  of  a  March  day  I  found  myself 
on  the  east  side  of  the  broad  river, 
with  not  a  human  being  or  dwelling-  in 
sight,  darkness  already  fallen,  and  only 
twinkling  lights  on  the  other  side.  It 
seemed  a  cold  welcome  ;  but  after  much 
shouting  and  waiting,  kind  friends  ap- 
peared. Man  and  horse  were  cared  for, 
and  two  pleasant  years  were  spent  there. 
"  My  nearest  ministerial  neighbor  of  any 
denomination  was  twenty-five  miles  off  on 
one  side,  and  as  far  as  the  North  Pole  on 
the  other.  To  a  funeral  or  a  wedding  a 
fifteen-mile  ride  was  a  frequent  occurrence. 
Many  scenes  come  back  to  memory,  some 
provocative  of  sadness,  some  of  mirth. 
We  were  raising  the  frame  of  our  new 
church-building  one  Monday  afternoon, 
when  a  stranger  came  with  a  call  to  ride 
twenty-five  miles  alone  through  an  un- 
known wood- road  without  a  clearing  for 
sixteen  miles,  to  cross  the  Kalamazoo 
River  by  ferry  at  midnight,  with  the  ferry- 
man asleep  on  the  other  bank,  and  the 


144      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

mosquitoes  abundant  and  hungry  —  to 
preach,  and  commit  to  the  grave  the  bodies 
of  eight  men,  women,  and  children  who 
had  been  drowned  on  the  Sabbath  by 
the  upsetting  of  a  pleasure-boat.  Such  a 
oight  have  my  eyes  never  looked  upon, 
where  all  felt  that  God  had  rebuked  their 
Sabbath-breaking.  This  was  near  Lake 
Michigan. 

"  Passing  across  the  State,  exchan- 
ging one  Sabbath  with  Rev.  O.  S.  Thomp- 
son of  St.  Clair,  after  retiring  to  rest 
for  the  night,  I  was  aroused  by  a  cry 
from  Mrs.  Thompson  ;  and  descending 
with  speed,  found  that,  hearing  steps  on 
her  piazza,  she  had  discovered  the  door 
ajar,  and  a  huge  bear  confronting  her  on 
the  outside.  She  slammed  the  door  in 
his  face,  and  cried  for  help.  I  looked  out- 
side, examined  the  pig-pen,  to  find  all 
safe ;  no  bear  was  visible.  Returning  to 
bed  again,  I  was  dropping  to  sleep,  when 
a  more  startling  shriek  called  me  to  look 
out  of  the  window ;  and  I  saw  the  bear 
just  leaping  the  fence,  and  making  for  the 


CHIPS  FROM  OTHER  LOGS.  145 

woods.  This  time  he  had  placed  his  paws 
on  the  window  at  Mrs.  Thompson's  bed- 
side, and  was  looking  her  in  the  face  ;  and 
the  prints  of  his  muddy  feet  remained 
there  many  days.  On  the  following  Mon- 
day we  were  greeted  by  a  bride  and 
groom,  who,  with  their  friends,  had  crossed 
the  river  from  Canada  to  get  married. 
One  being  a  Catholic,  and  the  other  a 
Protestant,  the  priest  would  not  marry 
them  without  a  fee  of  five  dollars,  which 
they  thought  too  much.  I  married  them, 
and  received  the  munificent  sum  of  sev- 
enty-five cents. 

"  I  have  had  too  sorrowful  proof  that 
prayers,  even  from  the  pulpit,  are  not 
always  answered.  On  one  occasion  our 
house  of  worship  was  borrowed  for  a  fu- 
neral by  another  denomination.  Going 
late,  I  slipped  in  behind  the  leader  at 
prayer  as  quietly  as  possible,  to  hear  the 
petition  that  '  God  would  make  the  min- 
ister of  this  church  a  perfect  gentleman, 
and  surround  his  church  with  a  halo  of 
cheveau-de-frise!  The  first  I  am  sure 


146      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE    FRONTIER. 

was  not  answered  ;  I  am  not  sure  about 
the  others. 

"  Of  personal  hair-breadth  escapes  from 
sudden  death  my  wife  kept  a  record  until 
she  got  to  fifteenthly,  and  then  stopped. 
Twice  from  drowning,  twice  from  being 
run  over  by  a  loaded  wagon,  the  last 
time  the  hind  wheel  stopping  exactly  at 
my  head,  but  utterly  spoiling  my  best 
silk  hat,  and  showing  the  blessing  of  a 
good  stout  head.'* 

The  place  where  this  man  reined  up 
his  horse  in  the  swamp,  and  had  to  call 
for  a  ferry,  and  where  neither  dwell- 
ing nor  human  being  was  in  sight,  is 
to-day  for  twenty  miles  almost  a  con- 
tinuous city  along  the  river  bank.  Every- 
thing is  changed  except  the  black  flies 
and  mosquitoes,  which  are  as  numerous 
as  ever.  Now,  one  other  thing,  and  a  cu- 
rious fact  too.  You  might  dig  all  day  and 
not  find  a  worm  to  bait  your  hook,  where 
to-day  a  spadeful  of  earth  has  worms 
enough  to  last  the  day  ;  and  this  is  true 
of  all  new  countries.  I  have  sent  thirty- 


CHIPS  FROM  OTHER  LOGS.  147 

five  miles  for  a  pint  of  worms  —  all  the 
way  from  St.  Ignace  to  Petoskey ;  and 
however  much  the  worms  may  have  had 
to  do  with  the  vegetable  mould  of  the 
earth,  it  is  only  where  human  beings 
live  that  the  common  angle-worm  is  found. 

The  incident  of  the  wedding  calls  to 
mind  one  I  heard  of  by  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  a  rough  drinking-man,  who  be- 
fore the  advent  of  our  minute-man  per- 
formed all  the  marriage  ceremonies.  A 
young  couple  found  him  at  the  saloon. 
His  first  question  was,  "Want  to  be  mar- 
ried ?  "  —  "  Yes."  —  "  Married,  two  dollars, 
please,  —  nuff  said." 

A  few  miles  above  this  place  the  first 
minister  who  went  in  was  so  frightened 
the  next  morning  that  he  took  to  his 
heels,  leaving  his  valise  behind.  The 
landlady,  a  Roman  Catholic,  put  the  boys 
up  to  pretend  they  were  going  to  shoot 
him,  and  so  fired  their  revolvers  over  his 
head ;  he  felt  it  was  no  place  for  him, 
and  away  he  went.  Indeed,  it  was  as  well 
for  him  that  he  did  go;  for  often,  after 


148      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

they  were  drunk,  what  was  commenced  in 
fun  ended  in  real  earnest.  However,  I 
will  say  this  for  the  frontiersman,  rough 
as  he  often  is,  he  respects  a  true  man, 
but  is  quick  to  show  profound  contempt 
for  any  man  of  the  "Miss  Nancy"  order. 

Ireland  is  not  the  only  country  that 
suffers  from  absentee  landlords.  The  dif- 
ference in  the  lumber-camps  is  often  de- 
termined by  the  foreman.  I  have  known 
places  where  the  owners  of  a  large  tract 
of  land  were  clergymen,  and  the  foreman 
was  an  infidel.  His  camp  was  a  fearful 
place  on  Christmas  Eve.  Twelve  gallons 
of  whiskey  worked  the  men  up  until  they 
acted  like  demons.  In  the  morning  men 
were  found  with  fingers  and  thumbs  bitten 
off,  eyes  gouged  out,  and  in  some  few  cases 
maimed  for  life.  In  other  places  I  have 
known  a  good  foreman  or  boss  to  hitch  up 
the  teams  and  bring  enough  men  down  on 
Sunday  evening  to  half  fill  the  little  mis- 
sion church. 

There  ought  to  be  in  all  the  lumber- 
camps  a  first-class  library,  and  suitable 


CHIPS  FROM  OTHER  LOGS.  149 

amusements  for  the  men  ;  for  when  a 
few  days  of  wet  weather  come  together, 
there  is  nothing  to  hold  them,  and  away 
they  go  in  companies  of  six,  seven, 
and  a  dozen,  and  meet  with  others  from 
all  directions,  making  for  the  village  and 
the  saloons  ;  and  then  rioting  and  drunk- 
enness make  a  pandemonium  of  a  place 
not  altogether  heavenly  to  start  with.  I 
have  known  men  who  were  religious  who 
had  to  retire  to  the  forest  to  pray,  or  be 
subjected  to  the  outrageous  conduct  of 
their  fellow  workmen. 

One  man  whom  I  knew  kicked  his 
wife  out-of-doors  because  she  objected  to 
having  dances  in  their  home.  She  was 
his  second  wife,  and  was  about  to  become 
a  mother,  but  died,  leaving  her  little  one 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  a  brutal  father. 
I  remember  preaching  a  rather  harsh  ser- 
mon at  the  funeral ;  but  some  years  after 
I  found  the.  sermon  had  a  mission.  I  met 
the  man  some  hundreds  of  miles  north. 
When  he  saw  me  he  said  he  had  never 
forgotten  the  sermon,  and  added,  to  my 


150       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

surprise,    that    he    was    a    Christian    now, 
and  living  with  his  first  wife ! 

How  men  can  lead  such  lives,  involving 
the  misery  of  others,  and  often  compassing 
their  death,  and  afterwards  live  happily,  I 
cannot  understand,  except  for  the  fact  that 
often  for  generations  these  people  have 
been  out  of  the  reach  of  Christian  civiliza- 
tion, and  so  far  as  morals  are  concerned 
have  been  practically  heathen.  Yet,  after 
all,  I  am  not  sure  but  that,  in  the  day  of 
judgment,  they  will  be  judged  less  harshly 
than  those  who  have  neglected  to  send 
the  gospel  to  them. 


A    TRIP  IN  NORTHERN  MICHIGAN.       \%l 

XV. 

A    TRIP    IN    NORTHERN    MICHIGAN. 

I  HAD  been  exploring  nearly  every  part 
of  the  Upper  Peninsula  where  there  was 
any  chance  of  an  opening  for  Christian 
work ;  had  visited  thirteen  churches,  and 
held  meetings  with  most  of  them ;  had  a 
few  conversions  and  two  baptisms.  I  found 
the  villages  and  towns  on  the  Chicago  and 
North-Western  Railway  nearly  all  supplied. 
There  was  one  place  with  1,500  people, 
and  another  with  2,000.  The  former  had 
a  Baptist  church  with  about  twenty  mem- 
bers, and  a  Methodist  Episcopal  with 
about  fifteen.  The  Baptists  were  building. 
The  rest  were  more  or  less  Lutheran, 
Catholic,  and  Nothingarian. 

Surely  there  is  need  of  mission  work 
here,  but  —  There  are  large  new-fash- 
ioned mills  here,  with  forty  years'  cutting 
ahead  of  them  at  the  rate  of  fifty  million 


152      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE    FROATTIER. 

feet  of  lumber  per  year.  I  had  excellent 
audiences  here  and  at  Thompson,  six 
miles  away,  where  there  was  no  church. 
Between  these  two  places  is  Perryville, 
with  200  people  and  no  church.  Both  are 
lumbering- towns. 

Another  town  of  importance  is  Iron 
Mountain,  which  then  had  2,000  people  ; 
two  Methodist  churches,  one  Swedish,  the 
other  English-speaking.  The  place  was 
alive  with  men  and  full  of  sin.  Where  are 
the  right  men  to  send  to  such  places  ?  If 
one  sits  in  his  study  and  consults  statistics, 
they  are  plenty ;  but  when  you  come  down 
to  actual  facts,  they  are  not  to  be  found. 
"The  Christian  League  of  Connecticut" 
has  much  truth  in  it,  but  not  all  the  truth. 
Without  doubt  their  unwise  distribution 
has  much  to  do  with  "  the  lack  of  minis- 
ters ; "  but  it  is  still  a  lamentable  fact  that 
the  laborers  are  few.  Not  with  us  alone. 
The  oft-repeated  saying  that  "  the  Metho- 
dist church  has  a  place  for  every  man,  and 
a  man  for  every  church,"  is  to  be  taken 
with  a  grain  of  salt.  I  meet  men  every 


A    TRIP  IN  NORTHERN  MICHIGAN.      153 

week  who  tell  me  they  have  five,  seven, 
nine,  and  even  eleven  charges.  We  have 
a  thousand  just  such  places. 

Now,  if  churches  will  put  up  with  the 
fifth,  seventh,  ninth,  or  eleventh  part  of 
a  man,  they  can  have  "  a  church  for  every 
minister,  and  a  minister  for  every  church." 
This  unchristian  way  of  pushing  and 
scrambling  in  our  little  villages  goes  a 
long  way  to  explain  the  dearth  of  men  on 
the  frontier ;  and  the  seizing  on  "  strategic 
points "  in  a  new  country  often  presents 
a  sad  spectacle. 

I  was  much  perplexed  about  one  place. 
Our  minister  was  the  first  on  the  ground  ; 
the  people  voted  for  a  union  church 
and  for  him ;  yet  two  other  churches 
organized.  When  I  visited  the  place  I 
found  our  brother  with  a  parsonage  half 
built.  There  was  nothing  but  the  bare 
studding  inside  —  no  plaster,  winter  com- 
ing on,  and  his  little  ones  coughing 
with  colds  caught  by  the  exposure. 
Then,  to  crown  all,  the  house  was  found 
to  be  on  the  wrong  lot,  which  brought 


154       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

the  building  to  a  stand-still ;  after  that  two 
other  denominations  rushed  up  a  build- 
ing—  one  only  a  shell,  but  dedicated. 
There  was  only  a  handful  of  hearers,  and 
our  minister  preached  more  than  two- 
thirds  of  the  sermons  there.  We  had  the 
best  people  with  us ;  and  yet  it  was  plain 
to  me  there  was  one  church  more  than 
there  ought  to  be.  Had  we  not  been 
first  there,  and  things  as  they  were,  I 
should  say,  "  Arise,  let  us  go  hence !  " 

I  am  constantly  asked,  "When  are 
you  going  to  send  us  a  man  ?  "  and  we 
have  places  where  there  is  only  one  min- 
ister for  two  villages.  Ah,  if  the  pastors 
hanging  around  our  city  centres  only  knew 
how  the  people  flock  to  hear  the  Word 
in  these  new  places,  surely  they  would 
say,  "  Here  am  I,  Lord ;  send  me." 

In  one  place  I  went  to,  there  were  two 
women  who  walked  eight  miles  to  hear 
the  sermon.  One  of  them  was  the  only 
praying  person  for  miles  around,  and  for 
some  years  back  the  only  one  to  conduct  a 
funeral  service,  to  pray,  or  to  preach.  At 


A    TRIP    TO  NORTHERN  MICHIGAN.       155 

this  place  there  was  an  old  lady  who  came 
nine  miles  every  Sunday  on  foot,  and 
sometimes  carried  her  grandchild.  Think 
of  that,  you  city  girls  in  French-heeled 
boots !  In  another  place  of  two  hundred 
people,  where  there  was  no  church,  a  little 
babe  died.  The  mother  was  a  Swede, 
only  a  little  while  out.  Would  you  be- 
lieve it,  there  was  not  a  man  at  the  fu- 
neral !  Women  nailed  the  little  coffin-lid 
down,  and  women  prayed,  read  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  lowered  the  little  babe  into  a 
grave  half  filled  with  water. 

In  another  new  settlement  I  visited, 
they  were  so  far  from  railway  or  stage 
that  they  buried  a  man  in  a  coffin  made 
of  two  flour-barrels,  and  performed  the 
funeral  rites  as  best  they  could.  But 
these  people  have  great  hearts  —  bigger 
than  their  houses.  When  a  brother  min- 
ister was  trying  to  find  a  place  for  me 
to  stay,  a  man  said,  "  Let  him  come  with 
me."  —  "  Have  you  room  ?  "  —  "  Lots  of  it." 
So  I  went.  In  a  little  clearing  I  found 
the  most  primitive  log  house  I  ever  saw ; 


156      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

but  the  "  lots  of  room"  —  that  was  out- 
of-doors.  The  man  and  his  wife  told  me 
that  when  they  came  there  it  was  rain- 
ing ;  so  they  stripped  some  bark  from  a 
tree,  and,  leaning  it  against  a  fallen  log, 
they  crept  underneath  ;  and  for  three  days 
it  rained.  The  fourth  being  Sunday  and 
a  fine  day,  the  settlers  mocked  them  for 
not  building.  On  Monday  and  Tuesday  it 
rained  again  ;  "  but  we  were  real  comfort- 
able ;  weren't  we,  Mary  ? "  said  the  man. 
Then  he  and  Mary  built  the  house 
together.  There  was  only  one  room  and 
one  bed ;  but  they  took  off  the  top  of 
the  bedding,  and  put  one  tick  on  the 
floor.  "That's  for  me,"  I  thought.  Not 
a  bit  of  it.  I  was  to  have  the  place  of 
honor.  So,  hanging  some  sheets  on 
strings  stretched  across  the  room,  they 
soon  partitioned  off  the  bed  for  me. 
Then,  after  reading  and  prayers,  the  man 
said,  "  Now,  any  time  you  are  ready  for 
bed,  Elder,  you  can  take  that  bed."  But 
how  to  get  there  ?  First  I  went  out  and 
gave  them  a  chance ;  but  they  did  not 


A    TRIP   TO   NORTHERN  MICHIGAN.      157 

take  it.  I  thought  perhaps  they  would 
go  and  give  me  a  chance  ;  but  they  did 
not.  So  I  began  to  disrobe.  I  took  a 
long  while  taking  off  coat  and  vest ;  then 
slowly  came  the  collaj  and  neck-tie  ;  next 
came  off  my  boots  and  stockings.  Now, 
I  thought,  they  will  surely  step  out ;  but 
no ;  they  talked  and  laughed  away  like 
two  children.  Slipping  behind  the  sheet, 
and  fancying  I  was  in  another  room,  I 
balanced  myself  as  well  as  I  could  on 
the  feather  bed,  and  managed  to  get  off 
the  rest  of  my  clothes,  got  into  bed,  and 
lay  looking  at  the  moonbeams  as  they 
glanced  through  the  chinks  of  the  logs, 
and  thinking  of  New  England  with  her 
silk  bed-quilts  and  bath-rooms,  till,  as  I 
mused,  sleep  weighed  down  my  drowsy 
eyelids,  and  New  England  mansions  and 
Michigan  log  huts  melted  into  one,  and 
they  both  became  one  Bethel  with  the 
angels  of  God  ascending  and  descending. 
I  visited  Lake  Linden,  and  found  the 
people  ready  for  organization  as  soon  as 
they  could  have  a  pastor.  A  brother  had 


158      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

just  left  for  this  field  ;  and  I  thought  it  safe 
to  say  that  we  should  have  a  self-support- 
ing church  there  at  no  distant  day.  We  did. 
While  staying  there  a  man  came  after  me 
to  baptize  two  children.  I  went,  and  one 
would  think  he  had  been  suddenly  trans- 
ferred to  Germany.  Great  preparations 
had  been  made.  I  noticed  a  large  bowl 
of  lemons  cut  up,  and  the  old  ladies 
in  their  best  attire.  I  was  requested  to 
give  them  a  baptismal  certificate,  and  to 
sign  the  witnesses'  names,  as  they  said 
that  was  done  by  the  minister.  It  was  a 
delicate  way  of  telling  me  they  could  not 
write. 

But  that  was  not  the  strangest  part  of 
the  ceremony.  The  father  and  mother 
stood  behind  the  witnesses,  the  latter 
being  two  men  and  two  women.  The 
women  held  the  children  until  all  was 
ready,  then  handed  them  to  the  men, 
who  held  them  during  baptism.  I 
preached  to  them  a  short  sermon  of  five 
minutes  or  so,  and  then,  when  I  had 
written  the  certificate,  each  witness  de- 


A    TRIP   TO  NORTHERN  MICHIGAN.       159 

posited  a  dollar  on  the  table.  The 
father  was  about  to  hand  me  five  dol- 
lars ;  but  I  made  him  give  four  of  it  to 
the  children.  They  would  not  take  a 
cent  of  the  witness  money ;  that  would 
be  "  bad  luck,"  they  said.  It  was  a  new 
experience  to  me.  The  people  had  no 
Bible  in  the  house.  As  I  had  left  mine 
at  the  village,  I  had  to  use  what  I  had 
in  my  heart.  Here  again,  I  thought,  what 
work  for  a  colporteur? 

A  great  work  might  be  done  by  one 
or  two  men  who  could  travel  all  the  time 
with  Bibles  and  other  good  books,  and 
preach  where  the  opportunity  offered.  We 
might  not  see  the  result,  but  it  would  be 
just  as  certain ;  and  though  the  people 
might  not  stay  here,  they  will  be  some- 
where. There  are  many  places  where 
neither  railway,  steamboat,  nor  stage  ever 
reaches,  and  yet  the  people  have  made  and 
are  making  homes  there.  They  went  up 
the  rivers  on  rafts,  and  worked  their  way 
through  the  wilderness  piecemeal.  Mis- 
sionary Thurston  carried  his  parlor  stove 


l6o       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

slung  on  a  pole  between  himself  and 
another  man. 

At  one  place,  while  preaching,  I  noticed 
a  man  fairly  glaring  at  me.  At  first  I 
thought  he  was  an  intensely  earnest  Chris- 
tian, but  he  "  had  a  devil."  After  meeting 
he  told  the  people,  "If  that  man  talks  like 
that  to-night,  I'll  answer  him  right  out  in 
meeting."  He  came,  and  behaved  him- 
self. Some  time  after  he  had  to  leave 
town  on  account  of  a  stabbing- affray,  and 
I  lost  sight  of  him  for  a  while.  Long 
after  I  was  in  another  place,  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  miles  away ;  and  while 
talking  with  our  missionary  there,  I  saw 
a  man  coming  from  a  choir-practice.  I 
said,  "Is  that  their  minister?" 

"  No  ;  he  is  our  new  school-teacher." 

"  Why,"  I  said,  "  that  is  the  very  man 
I  was  talking  to  you  about,  who  was  so 
wroth  with  the  sermon." 

"  Oh,  no !  you  are  mistaken  ;  he  is  a 
very  pious  young  man — opens  school 
with  prayer,  and  attends  all  our  meetings ; 
and  I  know  it  is  not  put  on  to  please  the 


A    TRIP   TO   NORTHERN  MICHIGAN.       l6l 

trustees,  for  they  are  not  that  kind  of 
men."  But  it  was  the  same  man,  minus 
the  devil,  "  for  behold  he  prayeth." 

At  another  place  I  preached  in  a  little 
log  schoolhouse.  Close  to  my  side  sat  a 
man  who  would  have  made  a  character 
for  Dickens.  He  had  large,  black,  earn- 
est eyes,  face  very  pale,  was  deformed, 
and,  with  a  little  tin  ear-trumpet  at  his  ear, 
he  listened  intently.  I  was  invited  by  his 
mother  to  dine  with  them.  I  found,  living 
in  a  little  house  roofed  with  bark,  the 
mother  and  two  sons.  One  of  the  boys 
was  superintendent  of  the  Sunday-school. 
I  was  surprised  at  the  first  question  put 
by  my  man  with  the  ear-trumpet, — 

"  Elder,  what  do  you  think  of  that  ser- 
mon of  — 's  in  Chicago  ?  I  have  al- 
ways been  bothered  with  doubts,  and  that 
unsettled  me  worse  than  ever." 

Who  would  have  thought  to  hear,  away 
up  in  the  woods,  in  such  a  house,  from 
such  a  man,  such  a  question  ?  I  tried  to 
take  him  away  from  to  Christ. 

After  dinner  he  opened  a  door  and  said, 
"  Look  here." 


1 62       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

There,  in  a  little  workshop,  was  a  dimin- 
utive steam-engine,  of  nearly  one-horse 
power,  made  entirely  by  himself;  the 
spindles,  shafts,  steam-box,  and  everything 
finished  beautifully.  The  shafts  and  rods 
were  made  with  much  pains  from  large 
three-cornered  files.  He  was  turning 
cant-hook  and  peevy  handles  for  a  living, 
and  to  pay  off  the  debt  on  their  little 
farm.  The  brother  had  a  desk  and  cabi- 
net of  his  own  make,  which  opened  and 
shut  automatically.  I  was  delighted. 
They  were  hungry  for  books  and  preach- 
ing. Are  not  such  people  worth  saving  ? 

These  conditions  existed  over  twelve 
years  ago,  but  they  are  as  true  to-day  in 
all  parts  of  the  newer  frontiers.  Mean- 
while some  of  the  above  churches  have 
become  self-supporting,  and  are  support- 
ing a  minister  in  foreign  lands. 


BLACK  CLOUDS    WITH  SILVER   LININGS.      163 

XVI. 

BLACK    CLOUDS    WITH    SILVER    LININGS. 

IN  a  former  chapter4  I  was  just  starting 
for  the  copper  regions.  Come  with  me, 
we  will  board  the  train  bound  for  Mar- 
quette. 

For  some  miles  our  way  ran  through 
thick  cedar  forests ;  then  we  reached  a 
hard-wood  region  where  we  found  a  small 
village  and  a  number  of  charcoal  kilns ; 
a  few  miles  farther  on,  another  of  like 
character.  Then,  with  the  exception  of  a 
way  station  or  siding,  we  saw  no  more 
habitations  of  men  until  we  reached  the 
Vulcan  iron  furnace  of  Newberry,  fifty- 
five  miles  from  Point  St.  lofnace.  The 

o 

place    had   about    800    population,    mostly 
employed  by  the  company. 

Twenty-five  miles  farther  on  we  reached 
Seney,  where  we  stayed  for  dinner.  This 
is  the  headquarters  for  sixteen  lumber 


1 64      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

\ 

camps,  with  hundreds  of  men  working  in 
the  woods  or "  on  the  rivers,  year  in  and 
year  out.  They  never  hear  the  gospel 
except  as  some  pioneer  home  missionary 
pays  an  occasional  visit.  There  are  some 
40,000  men  so  employed  in  Northern 
Michigan. 

After  another  seventy-five  miles  we 
glided  into  picturesque  Marquette,  over- 
looking its  lovely  Bay,  a  thriving  city  of 
some  7,000  population,  the  centre  of  the 
iron  mining  region.  Here  we  had  to 
wait  until  the  next  noon  before  we  could 
go  on. 

Our  road  now  led  through  the  very 
heart  of  the  iron  country.  Everything 
glittered  with  iron  dust,  and  thousands  of 
cars  on  many  tracks  showed  the  propor- 
tions this  business  had  attained.  We  have 
been  mounting  ever  since  leaving  Mar- 
quette, and  can  by  looking  out  of  the 
rear  window  see  that  great  "  unsalted 
sea,"  Lake  Superior. 

We  soon  reached  Ishpeming,  with  its 
8,000  inhabitants.  A  little  farther  on  we 


BLACK  CLOUDS    WITH  SILVER  LININGS.      165 

passed  Negaunee,  claiming  over  5,000 
people,  where  Methodism  thrives  by  rea- 
son of  the  Cornish  miners.  After  passing 
Michigamme  we  saw  but  few  houses. 

Above  Marquette  the  scenery  changes  ; 
there  are  rocks,  whole  mountains  of  rocks 
as  large  as  a  town,  with  a  few  dead  pines 
on  their-  scraggy  sides ;  we  pass  bright 
brown  brooks  in  which  sport  the  grayling 
and  the  speckled  trout.  Sometimes  a  herd 
of  deer  stand  gazing  with  astonishment 
at  the  rushing  monster  coming  towards 
them;  then  with  a  stamp  and  a  snort 
they  plunge  headlong  into  the  deep 
forest.  Away  we  go  past  L'Anse,  along 
Kewenaw  Bay,  and  at  last  glide  between 
two  mighty  hills  the  sides  of  which  glow 
and  sparkle  with  great  furnace  fires  and 
innumerable  lamps  shining  from  cottage 
windows,  while  between  lies  Portage  Lake, 
like  a  thread  of  gold  in  the  rays  of  .the 
setting  sun ;  or,  as  it  palpitates  with 
the  motion  of  some  giant  steamboat,  its 
coppery  waters  gleam  with  all  the  colors 
of  the  rainbow. 


1 66       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

Just  across  this  narrow  lake  a  royal  wel- 
come awaited  us  from  the  pastor  of  the 
First  Congregational  Church  of  Hancock. 
This  fine  church  is  set  upon  a  hill  that 
cannot  be  hid.  The  audience  fills  the 
room,  and  pays  the  closest  attention  to 
the  speaker.  They  had  the  best  Sunday- 
school  I  ever  saw.  Everything  moved 
like  clockwork;  every  one  worked  with 
vim.  In  addition  to  the  papers  that  each 
child  received,  seventy-five  copies  of  the 
Sunday  School  Times  were  distributed  to 
the  teachers  and  adult  scholars.  The  col- 
lection each  Sunday  averaged  over  three 
cents  a  member  for  the  whole  school, 
to  say  nothing  of  Christmas  gifts  to 
needy  congregations,  and  memorial  win- 
dows telling  of  the  good  works  in  far-off 
fields  among  the  mission  churches.  It 
was  my  privilege  to  conduct  a  few  gospel 
meetings  which  were  blessed  to  the  con- 
version of  some  score  or  more  of  souls 
who  were  added  to  the  church. 

Thirteen  miles  farther  north,  and  we 
were  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Lake  Superior 


BLACK  CLOUDS    WITH  SILVER  LININGS.      l6/ 

region.  It  had  been  up-hill  all  the  way. 
We  went  on  the  Mineral  Range  narrow 
gauge  railway ;  but  at  broad-gauge  price, 
five  cents  a  mile,  and  no  half-fare  per- 
mits ;  so  we  were  thankful  to  learn  the 
little  thing  was  only  thirteen  miles  long. 

Here  we  are  in  Calumet.  At  the  first 
glance  you  think  you  are  in  a  large  city ; 
tall  chimney  stacks  loom  up,  railways 
crossing  and  recrossing,  elevated  railways 
for  carrying  ore  to  the  rock-houses,  where 
they  crush  rock  enough  to  load  ten  trains 
of  nearly  forty  cars  per  day,  for  the  stamp- 
ing-works of  the  Calumet  and  Hecla 
Company.  You  cannot  help  noticing  the 
massive  buildings  on  every  hand,  in  one 
of  which  stands  the  finest  engine  in  the 
country  —  4,700  horse-power  —  that  is  to 
do  the  whole  work  of  the  mines.  Every- 
thing about  these  great  shops  works  easily 
and  smoothly. 

At  the  mine's  mouth  we  look  down  and 
see  the  flashing  of  the  lights  in  the  miners' 
hats  as  they  come  up,  twelve  feet  at  a 
stride,  from  3,000  feet  below;  hear  the 


1 68      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

singing  as  it  rolls  up  from  the  hardy  Cor- 
nish men  like  a  song  of  jubilee.  Come  to 
the  public  school  and  listen  to  the  patter 
of  the  little  feet  as  nearly  1,600  children 
pour  out  of  their  great  schoolhouse,  and 
you  will  be  glad  to  know  there  are  good 
churches  here  for  training  the  little  ones. 
Calumet,  Red  Jacket,  and  its  suburbs 
cannot  have  much  less  than  10000  in- 
habitants. 

But  here  comes  the  minister  of  the 
Congregational  church,  with  a  hearty 
Scotch  welcome  on  his  lips  as  he  hurries 
us  into  the  snug  parsonage,  and  makes  us 
forget  we  ever  slept  in  a  basswood  house 
partitioned  with  sheets.  Here,  too,  we 
stayed  and  held  a  series  of  meetings. 
This  is  one  of  the  few  frontier  churches 
that  sprung,  Minerva-like,  full  armed  for 
the  work.  Never  receiving,  but  giving 
much  aid  to  others,  it  has  increased. 
Here,  too,  I  found  another  best  Sunday- 
school.  In  this  school  on  Sunday  are 
scattered  good  papers  as  thick  as  the 
snowflakes  on  the  hills  ;  and  the  300  schol- 


BLACK   CLOUDS    WITH  SILVER  LININGS.      169 

ars  have  packed  away  in  their  hearts  over 
52,000  verses  of  the  Bible,  that  will, bring 
forth  fruit  in  old  age.  It  is  rich,  too,  in 
good  works  —  one  little  girl  gave  all  her 
Christmas  money  to  help  build  the  par- 
sonage. Over  a  hundred  of  the  young 
people  came  out  in  the  meetings,  and 
signed  a  simple  confession  of  faith ;  fifty 
of  them  went  to  the  Methodist  church, 
the  rest  remained  with  us. 

From  this  place  we  go  to  Lake  Linden, 
on  Torch  Lake,  where  are  the  stamping- 
works  of  the  Calumet  and  Hecla  mines. 
This  company  have  some  2,000  men  in 
their  employ,  and  expend  some  $500,000 
per  year  on  new  machinery  and  improve- 
ments. Everything  in  this  place  is  cy- 
clopean ;  ten  great  ball  stamps,  each 
weighing  640  Ibs.,  with  other  smaller 
ones,  shake  the  earth  for  blocks  away  as 
their  ponderous  weight  crushes  the  rocks 
as  fast  as  men  can  shovel  them  in.  Each 
man  works  half  an  hour,  and  is  then  re- 
lieved for  half  an  hour.  Over  300  car- 
loads of  ore  are  required  daily  to  keep 


I/O      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

these  monsters  at  work,  day  and  night  the 
year  round,  except  Sundays.  A  stoppage 
here  of  an  hour  means  $1,000  lost.  One 
stands  amazed  to  see  the  foundations  of 
some  new  buildings  —  bricks  enough  for 
a  block  of  houses,  2,000  barrels  of  Port- 
land cement  and  trap-rock  are  mixed,  the 
whole  capped  off  with  Cape  Ann  granite. 
Two  wheels,  40  feet  in  diameter,  are  to 
swing  round  here,  taking  up  thousands 
of  gallons  of  water  every  minute. 


SAD   EXPERIENCES. 


XVII. 

SAD    EXPERIENCES. 

FOURTEEN  years  ago  I  attended  fifty- 
one  funerals  in  twenty-one  months.  This 
large  number  was  due  to  the  fact  that 
toward  the  south  and  west  the  nearest 
minister  was  ten  miles  off,  north  and 
east  over  twenty  miles  ;  and  though 
there  were  only  some  450  souls  in 
White  Cloud,  we  may  safely  put  down 
3,000  as  the  number  who  looked  to 
this  point  for  ministerial  aid  in  time  of 
trouble. 

The  traveller  by  rail  passes  a  few  small 
places,  and  may  think  that  between  sta- 
tions there  is  nothing  but  a  wilderness, 
for  such  it  often  appears.  He  would  be 
surprised  to  learn  that  one  mile  from  the 
line,  at  short  intervals,  are  large  steam- 
mills  with  little  communities  —  forty,  fifty, 
and  sixty  souls. 


1/2      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

Here  and  there  are  many  of  the  Lord's 
people,  who,  overwhelmed  by  the  iniquity 
they  see  and  hear,  have  hung  their  harps 
upon  the  willows,  and  have  ceased  to 
sing  the  Lord's  song.  They  feel  that  if 
some  one  could  lead,  they  would  follow ; 
and  the  call  for  help  is  imperative,  if 
we  take  no  higher  grounds  than  that  of 
self-protection.  Hundreds  of  children  are 
growing  up  in  ignorance,  and  will  inevi- 
tably drift  to  the  cities.  It  is  from  these 
sources  that  the  dangerous  classes  in 
them  are  constantly  augmented. 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that  in  our  day,  in 
Michigan,  should  be  found  such  a  spiritual 
lack  as  the  following  incident  reveals. 
One  night  just  as  I  was  falling  asleep,  a 
knock  aroused  me.  A  man  had  come  for 
me  to  go  some  five  miles  through  the 
woods  to  see  a  poor  woman  who  was 
dying.  The  moon  was  shining  when  we 
started,  and  we  expected  soon  to  reach 
the  place.  But  we  had  scarcely  reached 
the  forest  when  a  storm  broke  upon  us. 
The  lightning  was  so  vivid  that  the  horse 


SAD   EXPERIENCES.  173 

came  to  a  stand.  The  trees  moaned  and 
bent  under  the  heavy  wind,  and  threatened 
to  fall  on  us.  No  less  than  seven  trees 
fell  in  that  road  some  few  hours  later. 
Our  lantern  was  with  difficulty  kept  alight, 
so  that  we  made  but  little  progress  ;  for 
it  was  dangerous  to  drive  fast,  and,  indeed, 
to  go  slow,  for  that  matter.  We  spent  two 
hours  in  going  five  miles.  As  we  were 
fastening  the  horse,  I  heard  cries  and 
groans  proceeding  from  the  house,  and 
was  met  at  the  door  with  exclamations  of 
sorrow,  and,  "  Oh,  sir,  you  are  too  late, 
too  late!" 

This  was  an  old,  settled  community  of 
farmers ;  some  eight  or  ten  men  and 
women  at  the  house,  some  of  whom  have 
had  Christian  parents,  and  yet  not  one 
to  pray  with  the  poor  woman  or  point 
her  to  the  Lamb  of  God. 

Did  they  think  I  could  absolve  her? 
Did  they  look  upon  a  minister  as  a  tele- 
graph or  a  telephone  operator,  whom  they 
must  call  to  send  the  message  ? 

We   often  read  of  the  overworked  city 


1/4      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

pastor,  and  the  contrast  of  his  busy  life 
with  the  quiet  of  his  country  brother.  But 
the  contrast  does  not  apply  to  the  home 
missionary  who  has  a  large  field,  as  most 
of  them  have.  Let  me  give  some  inci- 
dents of  one  week  of  home  missionary 
experience.  On  Saturday,  a  funeral  ser- 
vice. Sabbath,  two  Sunday-schools  and 
preaching.  Monday,  I  visited  a  poor  Fin- 
nish woman,  suddenly  bereft  of  her  hus- 
band, who  had  been  fishing  on  Sunday  in 
company  with  three  others  —  a  keg  of 
beer  which  they  took  with  them  explained 
the  trouble.  Tuesday,  attended  the  fu- 
neral, closing  the  service  just  in  time  to 
catch  the  train  to  reach  an  appointment 
nine  miles  off.  Friday,  received  a  tele- 
gram to  come  immediately  to  a  village, 
where  a  man  was  killed  in  the  mill. 
While  there,  waiting  for  the  relatives,  ex- 
pected on  the  next  train,  another  tele- 
gram came  from  home,  calling  me  back 
instantly. 

Yet    we    cannot    stop,    for    the    work 
presses.     Did  we  not  know  that  the  Lord 


SAD   EXPEDIENCES.  175 

is  above   the  water   floods,  we  should  be* 
overwhelmed. 

I  am  tempted  to  write  a  few  lines 
about  a  family  that  came  to  Woodville 
just  before  Christmas.  It  consisted  of  a 
mother,  son-in-law,  three  daughters,  and 
two  sons.  Before  they  had  secured  a 
house  their  furniture  (save  a  stove  and  a 
few  chairs)  was  burned.  They  were  very 
poor,  and  moved  the  few  things  they  had 
left  into  two  woodsheds,  one  of  which 
was  lower  than  the  other,  so  that  after  the 
end  of  one  was  knocked  out  there  was  a 
long  step  running  right  across  the  house. 
Now,  fancy  a  family  of  six  in  here  in  win- 
ter time,  with  no  bedsteads,  a  table,  and 
some  broken  chairs  and  stove,  and  you 
can  imagine  what  sort  of  a  home  it  was. 
The  widow  felt  very  despondent,  hinted 
about  being  tired  of  life,  and  mentioned 
poison.  One  morning,  after  drinking  a 
great  quantity  of  cold  water,  she  turned 
in  her  bed  and  died.  The  coroner's  jury 
pronounced  it  dropsy  of  the  heart,  and 
waived  a  post-mortem  examination. 


176      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

I  felt  much  drawn  toward  the  children 
during1  the  funeral  service,  and  spoke 
mainly  to  them.  They  seemed  to  drink 
in  every  word,  and  I  believe  understood 
all. 

Three  weeks  later  a  daughter  lay  dying 
of  diphtheria.  She  called  the  doctor,  and 
told  him  she  was  going  home  to  live  with 
Jesus,  and  was  quite  happy.  One  week 
from  that  time  a  son  followed,  twelve 
years  of  age.  He  also  went  quite  re- 
signed. I  shall  never  forget  the  scene 
presented  at  this  time ;  the  dark  room, 
the  extemporized  bedsteads,  the  wind 
playing  a  dirge  through  the  numerous 
openings,  the  man  worn  out  with  night- 
work  and  watching,  stretched  beside  the 
coffin,  the  dead  boy  on  the  other  bed,  two 
more  children  sick  with  the  same  disease. 
People  seemed  afraid  to  visit  them.  I 
gave  the  little  ones  some  money  each 
time  I  went.  The  little  four-year-old,  a 
pretty  boy,  said,  — 

"  You  won't  have  to  give  any  for  Willie 
this  time,  I  have  his." 


SAD   EXPERIENCES.  IJJ 

Death  seemed  to  have  no  terrors  for 
the  little  ones.  I  talked  to  them  of  Jesus, 
and  told  them  he  was  our  Elder  Brother 
and  God  was  our  Father.  The  little  boy 
listened  as  I  talked  of  heaven,  and  seemed 
very  thoughtful.  In  another  week,  to  a 
day,  I  was  there  again.  The  little  fellow 
was  going  too  ;  and  now  he  said,  — 

"  I  want  you  to  buy  me  a  pretty  coffin, 
won't  you  ?  and  put  nice  leaves  and  flow- 
ers in  it.  I  am  going  to  heaven,  you 
know,  and  I  shall  see  my  brother.  Jesus 
is  my  brother,  you  know." 

And  so  he  passed  away  like  one  falling 
to  sleep.  I  could  not  but  think  of  the 
glorious  change  for  these  little  ones,  now 
"  safe  in  the  arms  of  Jesus."  From  a  hut 
to  a  mansion,  from  hearing  the  hoarse, 
gruff  breathing  of  the  mill  to  the  chanting 
of  the  heavenly  choirs,  from  the  dark 
squalor  and  rags  to  see  the  King  in  his 
beauty,  to  hunger  no  more,  to  thirst  no 
more,  neither  to  have  the  sun  light  on 
them  nor  any  heat,  to  be  led  to  living 
fountains  of  waters,  to  have  all  tears 


178      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER, 

wiped  from  their  eyes  —  who  would  wish 
them  back  ? 

I  remember  in  one  case  a  man  whose 
wife  had  run  off  with  another  man,  and 
had  left  him  with  two  boys,  one  an  idiot. 
The  poor  little  child  was  found  dead 
under  the  feet  of  the  oxen,  and  when 
the  funeral  took  place  the  man  with  his 
remaining  son  came  through  the  woods 
and  across  lots  to  the  cemetery,  while 
a  man  with  the  coffin  in  a  cart  came 
by  the  road.  The  only  ones  at  the 
funeral  were  these  two  and  the  carter, 
with  myself. 

I  visited  one  home  where  nine  out  of 
eleven  were  down  with  diphtheria.  Two 
young  girls  in  a  fearful  condition  were 
in  the  upper  rooms ;  nothing  but  horse- 
blankets  were  hung  up  in  the  unplastered 
rooms,  but  they  did  not  keep  out  the  snow. 
The  father  and  the  man  who  drove  were 
the  only  ones  beside  myself  at  this  funeral. 
In  one  family  four  died  before  the  first 
was  buried. 

It  made  me  think  of  the  plague  in  Lon- 


SAD   EXPERIENCES.  179 

don,  and  the  man  tolling  the  bell  and  cry- 
ing, "  Bring  out  your  dead."  Scarlet  fever, 
small-pox,  and  typhoid  were  epidemic  for 
some  time,  and  it  was  then  the  people 
began  to  appreciate  the  services  of  the 
minute-man. 

Some  cases  were  rather  odd,  to  say  the 
least.  One  night  a  boy  was  lost.  I  sug- 
gested to  his  mother  that  he  might  be 
drowned,  and  that  the  pond  ought  to 
be  searched.  Her  reply  was  amazing: 
"  Well,  if  he's  drownded,  he's  drownded, 
and  what's  the  use  till  morning."  Here 
was  philosophy.  Yet  at  the  funeral  this 
woman  was  so  punctilious  about  the 
ceremonies  that,  seeing  a  horse  which 
broke  into  a  trot  for  a  few  steps,  she 
said  "  it  didn't  look  very  well  at  a  funeral 
to  be  a-trottin'  hosses." 


180      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 


XVIII. 

A    SUNDAY    ON    SUGAR    ISLAND. 

SUGAR  ISLAND  is  about  twelve  miles 
from  Sault  Ste.  Marie.  It  is  twenty-four 
miles  long  and  from  three  to  twelve  wide. 
Its  shape  is  somewhat  like  an  irregularly 
formed  pear.  Seven-tenths  of  its  people 
are  Roman  Catholic ;  quite  a  number  of 
them  came  from  Hudson's  Bay,  and  what 
others  call  a  terrible  winter  is  to  them 
quite  mild. 

One  Scotchman,  who  lived  there  thirty 
years,  had  never  seen  a  locomotive  or 
been  on  board  of  a  steamboat,  although 
numbers  of  the  latter  might  be  seen  daily 
passing  his  house  all  summer  long, —  little 
tugs  drawing  logs,  and  the  great  steam- 
ers of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway,  with 
their  powerful  engines,  and  lighted  by 
electricity.  He  came  by  way  of  Hud- 
son's Bay,  which  accounts  for  his  never 


A   SUNDAY  ON  SUGAR   ISLAND.  l8l 

having  seen  a  locomotive ;  and  he  rather 
prided  himself  on  never  having  been  on 
board  a  steamboat.  Like  many  of  the 
trappers  of  an  early  day,  he  married  an 
Indian  woman.  Quite  a  number  of  the 
descendants  of  these  old  pioneers  live  on 
the  island.  Some  of  them  formed  part  of 
Brother  Scurr's  membership  and  congre- 
gation ;  one  of  them  was  a  deacon,  and 
a  good  one  too. 

But  now  for  our  journey.  It  was  eight 
miles  to  our  first  appointment,  and  we 
went  by  water.  Mrs.  Scurr  and  the  two 
children,  with  a  little  maid,  made  up  our 
company,  so  that  our  boat  was  well  filled. 
My  hands,  not  used  to  rowing,  soon  gave 
out,  and  Brother  Scurr  had  to  do  nearly 
all  of  that  work.  It  was  a  hot,  bright 
morning  in  the  latter  part  of  June  —  a 
lovely  day — and  we  soon  passed  down 
the  river  into  Lake  George,  and  after 
two  hours'  steady  pulling,  made  a  land- 
ing opposite  a  log  house  just  vacated  by 
the  settlers  for  one  more  convenient. 

This  was   our   sanctuary  for   the   morn- 


1 82       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

ing.  Here  we  found  a  mixed  company 
—  settlers  from  Canada,  "  the  States," 
Chippewas,  etc.,  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren. Some  of  them  came  four,  five, 
and  eight  miles ;  some  in  boats,  some 
on  foot.  One  old  Indian  was  there  who 
did  not  know  a  word  of  English,  but  sat 
listening  as  intently  as  if  he  took  it  all  in. 

After  the  sermon,  nearly  all  present 
partook  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  There 
were  not  so  many  there  as  usual  ;  for 
one  of  the  friends  had  just  lost  a  little 
child  by  diphtheria,  and  two  more  lay 
sick ;  and  such  is  the  difficulty  of  commu- 
nication that  it  was  buried  before  Brother 
Scurr  had  heard  of  its  death/  This  kept 
many  away. 

We  now  took  to  our  boat  again,  and, 
after  rowing  three  miles,  thought  we  es- 
pied a  beautiful  place  to  dine ;  but  we 
had  reckoned  without  our  host.  Mos- 
quitoes and  their  cousins,  the  black  flies, 
were  holding  their  annual  camp-meeting, 
and  about  the  time  we  landed  were  in 
the  midst  of  a  praise  service.  It  was 


A   SUNDAY  ON  SUGAR   ISLAND.  183 

at  once  broken  up  on  our  arrival ;  -and, 
without  even  waiting  for  an  invitation, 
they  joined  in  our  repast.  This  was  con- 
siderably shortened,  under  the  circum- 
stances, and  we  were  glad  to  take  to 
the  water  again.  A  word  about  the  in- 
sect world  in  this  region.  They  are  very 
different  from  those  farther  south,  being 
as  active  in  the  daytime  as  in  the  night. 
Perhaps,  because  of  shorter  seasons,  they 
have  to  be  at  it  all  the  time  to  get  in 
their  work. 

Another  good  pull  at  the  oar  and  a 
little  help  from  the  wind  brought  us  to 
our  second  stage,  the  Indian  village. 
On  the  hillside  stood  the  schoolhouse 
where  we  were  to  preach.  The  view  from 
this  spot  was  lovely.  Lake  George  lay 
flashing  in  the  sunshine,  and  beyond  the 
great  hills  stretched  as  far  as  the  eye 
could  reach,  and  seemed  in  the  distance 
to  fold  one  over  the  other,  like  purple 
clouds,  until  both  seemed  mingled  into 
one. 

We  had  a  somewhat  different  audience 


184      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

this  time,  only  four  white  men  being  pres- 
ent ;  but  all  could  understand  English, 
except  our  old  Indian  friend  of  the  morn- 
ing, who  was  again  present,  and  for  whose 
benefit  the  chiefs  son  arose  after  I  was 
through,  and  interpreted  the  whole  dis- 
course, save  a  little  part  which  he  said 
he  condensed  as  the  time  was  short.  I 
was  both  astonished  and  delighted.  The 
people  told  me  he  could  do  so  with  a 
sermon  an  hour  long,  without  a  break. 
Most  of  the  company,  as  a  rule,  under- 
stand both  languages,  and  keep  up  a 
keen  watch  for  mistakes.  It  is  a  won- 
derful feat.  The  man's  gestures  were 
perfect ;  he  was  a  natural  orator.  I 
asked  him  if  he  did  not  find  it  much 
harder  to  follow  some  men  than  others. 
He  said,  "  Ough !  Some  go  big  way 
round  before  they  come  to  it ;  they  aw- 
ful hard  to  follow." 

We  took  leave  of  our  Indian  friends 
with  mingled  feelings  of  hope  as  to  what 
they  might  be,  and  of  pity  for  what  they 
were. 


A   SUNDAY  ON  SUGAR   ISLAND.  185 

I  noticed  a  lot  of  new  fence-rails  around 
the  fields  on  the  Canada  side,  and  re- 
marked that  the  people  were  industrious. 
"  Oh,  yes,"  said  our  brother;  "because 
they  burnt  their  fences  last  winter  for 
firing."  Sure  enough ;  what  is  the  use 
of  a  fence  in  winter  except  to  burn  ? 
And  then  the  wood  is  well  seasoned. 
One  church  over  there  bought  nearly  all 
the  members  of  the  other  with  flour  and 
pork;  and  if  you  ask  an  Indian  in  that 
region  to-day  to  unite  with  your  church, 
he  says,  "  How  much  flour  you  give  me 
to  join?"  That's  business. 

But  it  was  getting  late,  and  we  had 
four  miles'  rowing  yet  before  us.  After  a 
good  hour's  pull  at  the  oars  we  reached 
the  parsonage,  just  as  the  sun  was  set- 
ting in  purple  and  gold  behind  the  blue 
hills  of  Algoma.  And  there,  as  we  sat 
watching  the  deepening  twilight,  brother 
Scurr  told  me  some  of  the  trials  of  mis- 
sionary life  in  that  region. 

Often  walking  miles  through  the  wet 
grass  and  low  places,  in  the  spring  and 


1 86      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

fall,  standing  in  his  wet  shoes  while 
preaching,  and  then  returning  —  in  the 
winter  on  snow-shoes,  following  the  trail 
(for  there  are  no  roads)  ;  in  the  sum- 
mer, when  the  weather  permits,  by  boat. 
When  the  snow  was  deep,  and  the  wind 
was  howling  around  his  house,  he  had  to 
leave  his  sick  wife  to  keep  his  appoint- 
ments miles  away,  and  was  almost  afraid 
to  enter  the  house  on  his  return,  for  fear 
she  had  left  him  alone  with  his  little  ones 
in  the  wilderness.  It  was  twelve  miles  to 
the  nearest  doctor  on  the  mainland ;  and 
the  only  congenial  companion  for  his  wife 
was  the  missionary's  wife  on  the  Cana- 
dian side,  a  mile  and  a  half  away.  This 
good  sister  knew  something  of  the  shady 
side  of  a  missionary  wife's  life,  as  she 
lay  for  weeks  hovering  between  life  and 
death. 

One  touching  little  incident  brother 
Scurr  told  me  that  deeply  affected  me. 
One  dark  night  Deacon  John  Sebastian 
came  and  told  him  his  daughter,  a  fine 
girl  of  some  sixteen  years  of  age,  was 


A   SUNDAY  ON  SUGAR   ISLAND.  1 87 

dying,  and  wished  to  see  him.  The 
mother  was  a  Roman  Catholic ;  but  the 
daughter,  who  attended  our  church  with 
her  father,  had  accepted  Christ  for  her 
Saviour,  and  now  desired  to  partake  of 
the  Lord's  Supper  with  us  ere  she  de- 
parted. There  in  the  farmhouse  at  mid- 
night the  little  company,  with  the  mother 
joining,  partook  of  the  sacrament.  All 
church  distinctions  were  forgotten,  as  the 
Protestant  father  and  Catholic  mother  sat 
with  clasped  hands,  and  with  tear-be- 
dimmed  eyes  saw  their  loved  one  go  into 
the  silent  land.  I  left  the  next  morning, 
promising  to  call  again  as  soon  as  I 
could,  and  some  time  to  hold  meetings 
with  them  when  the  men  were  at  home 
from  fishing  in  the  winter. 

I  attended  the  dedication  of  a  new 
church  at  Alba  costing  a  little  over 
$1,000,  all  paid  or  provided  for,  $137 
being  raised  on  the  night  of  dedication, 
in  sums  from  two  cents,  given  by  a  little 
girl,  up  to  ten  dollars,  the  highest  sum 
given  that  night  by  one  person.  All  our 


1 88      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

people  in  the  rural  districts  are  very  poor, 
but  often  generous  and  self-denying.  I 
know  of  one  good  mother  in  Israel  who 
went  without  her  new  print  dress  for  the 
summer  in  order  to  give  the  dollar  to 
the  minister  at  Conference.  Think  of 
that  dollar  dress,  my  good  sisters,  when 
you  are  perplexed  about  whether  you 
shall  have  yours  cut  bias,  or  gored,  or 
Mother  Hubbard  style,  or  —  well,  I  don't 
know  much  about  styles ;  but  "  think  on 
these  things." 


THE   NEEDS   OF   THE  MINUTE-MAN.      189 

XIX. 

THE    NEEDS    OF   THE    MINUTE-MAN. 

THE  needs  of  the  minute-man  are  as 
great  as  his  field.  If  the  army  sent 
its  minute-men  to  the  front  as  poorly 
equipped  for  battle  as  our  army  of 
minute-men  often  are,  it  would  be  de- 
feated. The  man  needs,  besides  a  home, 
a  library  and  good  literature  up  to. date. 
Religious  papers  a  year  or  two  old  make 
good  reading,  and  biographies  of  good 
men  are  very  stimulating.  A  full  set  of 
Parkman's  works  would  be  of  inestimable 
value  in  keeping  up  his  courage  and  help- 
ing his  faith.  The  smaller  the  field,  the 
greater  the  need  of  good  reading ;  for  on 
the  frontier  you  miss  the  society  of  the 
city,  and  its  ministers'  meetings,  and  the 
great  dailies,  and  all  the  rush  of  modern 
life  that  is  so  stimulating.  And  yet  you 
find  men  of  all  conditions  and  mental 


1 90       MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE  FRONTIER. 

stature.      A    man   who    can    get    up    two 
o-ood   sermons  a  week   that  will   feed   the 

o 

varied   types  that  he  will  meet  at  church 
needs  to  be  a  genius. 

When  a  man  has  access  to  all  the  great 
reviews,  to  fine  libraries,  public  and  pri- 
vate, and  has  the  stimulation  that  comes 
from  constant  intercourse  with  others,  be- 
sides an  income  that  will  allow  him  to 
buy  the  best  books,  when  his  services 
begin"  with  forty-five  minutes  of  liturgy 
and  song,  backed  with  a  fine  pipe-organ, 
when  he  enjoys  two  or  three  months  vaca- 
tion into  the  bargain,  he  must  be  a  very 
small  specimen  of  a  man  if  he  cannot 
write  a  thirty-minute  sermon;  but  when 
all  a  man's  books  can  be  put  on  one 
shelf,  when  his  salary  barely  keeps  the  pot 
boiling,  and  he  has  fifty-two  Sundays  to 
fill,  year  in  and  year  out,  it  is  no  wonder 
that  short  pastorates  are  the  rule.  When 
a  man  reaches  his  new  field  with  no 
better  start  than  many  have, — the  major- 
ity without  a  college  training,  and  some 
without  even  a  high-school  education,  —  it 


THE   NEEDS   OF   THE   MINUTE-MAN.       191 

is  not  long  before  some  of  his  parish  will 
be  asking  a  superintendent  or  presiding 
elder  whether  he  cannot  send  them  a  good 
man.  "  Our  man  here,"  he  says,  "  is 
good,  but  he  can't  preach  for  shucks." 
The  new  man  comes,  and  in  three  months 
he  is  in  the  same  boat.  And  another 
comes;  and  after  a  little  there  is  as  much 
money  spent  for  the  sustaining  of  these 
families  as  would  keep  a  good  man. 

So  it  goes  on,  year  after  year.  Secta- 
rian jealousies  and  sectarian  strivings  are 
as  bad  for  the  spiritual  development  of 
a  country  as  saloons.  So  that  we  find 
to-day,  in  little  towns  of  two  thousand 
inhabitants,  ten  or  eleven  churches,  all 
of  them  little  starveling  things,  "  No  one 
so  poor  to  do  them  reverence ;  "  while  the 
real  frontier  work  is  left  with  thousands 
of  churchless  parishes. 

If  a  man  properly  fitted  out  for  his 
field  could  go  at  first,  it  would  often  stop 
the  multiplication  of  little  sects  whose 
chief  article  of  faith  is  some  wretched 
little  button-hook-and-eye  or  feet-washing 


IQ2       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

ceremony.  In  the  beginning,  such  is  the 
weakness  of  the  new  community,  a  union 
church  is  inevitable,  there  not  being 
enough  of  a  kind  to  go  around ;  and 
nothing  but  a  lack  of  Christianity  will 
break  that  church  up. 

For  an  example,  here  is  a  superintend- 
ent with  a  field  a  thousand  miles  by  four 
hundred.  He  hears  that  a  new  town  is 
started  up  in  the  mountains,  a  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  from  the  railway.  The 
stage  is  the  only  means  of  reaching  it ; 
no  stopping  on  the  road  but  twenty  min- 
utes for  meals.  After  a  tedious  journey 
he  reaches  the  place,  and  finds  the  usual 
conditions,  —  saloons,  gambling-houses  by 
the  score,  houses  of  every  description  in 
the  process  of  erection. 

He  goes  up  to  the  hotel  man,  and 
asks  whether  he  can  procure  a  place  for 
preaching.  He  is  given  the  schoolhouse. 
He  announces  preaching  service,  and  be- 
gins. The  people  crowd  the  little  build- 
ing; they  sit  or  stand  outside.  Here  are 
members  of  a  dozen  sects,  and  a  solitary 


THE   NEEDS   OF   THE   MINUTE-MAN,      193 

feet-washer  feeling1  lonely  enough.  The 
work  crowds  him ;  and  he  wires  to  head- 
quarters at  New  York,  —  a  strange  tele- 
gram,— "  For  the  love  of  God,  send  me 
a  man."  Just  as  the  telegram  arrives, 
a  man  who  has  just  come  from  England 
steps*  into  the  office.  He  is  examined, 
and  asked  whether  he  would  like  to  go 
beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains.  He  is 
the  right  stuff.  "  Anywhere,"  is  the  an- 
swer ;  and  as  fast  as  limited  express  can 
take  him  he  hurries  to  the  new  field.  He 
finds  a  great  crowd  outside  the  school- 
house,  a  revival  going  on,  and  he  has 
hard  work  to  reach  the  minister.  A 
church  is  organized,  and  it  is  to  be  a 
union  church.  What  a  calamity  to  have 
the  brethren  living  together  in  unity!  To 
have  Christ's  prayer  answered  that  they 
may  be  one !  It's  dreadful.  But  never 
mind ;  the  Devil,  in  the  shape  of  sect 
that  holds  its  deformity  higher  than 
Christ,  soon  makes  an  end  of  that ;  so 
that  the  real-estate  agent  advertises  good 
water,  good  schools,  and  good  churches. 


194      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

The  only  way  I  see  out  of  this  anti- 
christian  warfare  is  to  send  a  well-balanced, 
well-paid  man  to  start  with.  In  the  case 
just  stated,  the  man  was  a  good  one,  and 
held  the  fort,  and  managed  skilfully  his 
united  flock. 

There  are  times  when  the  best  men  will 
fail,  as  they  do  in  business.  The  place 
promises  great  growth,  and  peters  out ; 
but  in  these  small  towns,  where  the  growth 
will  never  be  large,  your  faithful  man  often 
does  a  mighty  work.  His  flock  are  con- 
stantly moving  away,  but  new  ones  are 
constantly  coming ;  and  so  his  church  is 
helping  to  fill  others  miles  away,  and  it  will 
not  be  until  he  is  translated  that  we  shall 
see  how  grand  a  man  he  was. 

I  remember  one  man  with  his  wife  and 
family  presenting  himself  one  day  to  the 
Superintendent  of  Missions.  He  had  just 
left  a  pretty  little  rose-covered  parsonage 
in  England.  The  only  place  open  was  a 
very  cold  and  hard  field.  The  forests  had 
been  destroyed  by  fire.  The  climate  was 
intense,  either  summer  or  winter ;  but  he 


THE  NEEDS   OF   THE   MINUTE-MAN.       195 

said,  "  I  will  go.     I  do  not  want  to  be  a 
candidate." 

And  off  he  went  with  his  family.  In 
the  winter  his  bedroom  was  often  so  cold 
that  the  thermometer  registered  20°  below 
zero;  and  in  spite  of  a  big  stove,  the 
temperature  was  at  zero  in  mid-day  near 
the  door  and  windows.  One  of  his  little 
ones  born  there  was  carried  in  blankets  to 
be  baptized  in  the  little  church  when  it 
was  2°  below  zero.  I  used  to  send  this 
man  small  sums  of  money  that  were 
given  me  by  kind  friends.  All  the  money 
promised  on  this  field  from  three  churches 
was  twenty  dollars  a  year,  and  part  of  that 
paid  in  potatoes.  The  last  five  dollars 
I  sent  him  came  back.  He  said  he  felt 
it  would  not  be  right  to  take  it,  as  he 
had  just  accepted  a  call  to  a  Presbyterian 
church.  He  felt  almost  like  making  an 
apology  for  doing  so,  as  he  said,  "  My 
boys  are  growing  up,  and  they  can  get 
so  little  schooling  here  that  I  am  going 
to  move  where  they  can  at  least  get  an 
education."  And  then  he  was  going  to 


196      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

have  seven  hundred  dollars  a  year.  I  sent 
the  money  back,  saying  that,  as  he  was 
moving,  he  would  probably  need  it.  The 
answer  that  came  said  he  had  just  spent 
his  last  two  cents  for  a  postage-stamp 
when  the  five  dollars  came. 

I  suppose  there  are  at  least  ten  thou- 
sand minute-men  on  the  field  to-day, 
working  under  the  different  home  mis- 
sionary societies.  Most  of  them  have 
wives,  and  with  their  children  will  make 
an  army  of  fifty  thousand  strong,  the  aver- 
age of  whose  salaries  will  not  exceed  five 
hundred  dollars  per  year.  And  on  this 
small  sum  your  minute-man  must  feed, 
clothe,  and  educate  his  family ;  and  how 
much  can  he  possibly  use  to  feed  his  own 
mind  ?  —  the  man  who  ought  to  be  able 
to  stand  in  the  front  ranks  at  all  times,  in 
order  to  gain  the  respect  of  the  commu- 
nity in  which  he  should  be  the  leader  in 
all  good  works. 


IN  THE  MINER'S   CAMP.  197 

XX. 

THE    MINUTE-MAN    IN    THE    MINER'S    CAMP. 

WHEN  the  first  minute-men  went  to  the 
Pacific  slope,  they  had  a  long  and  dan- 
gerous voyage  by  sea  round  Cape  Horn  ; 
and  on  their  arrival  they  had  to  live  in  a 
tent,  pay  a  dollar  a  pound  for  hay,  and 
a  dollar  apiece  for  potatoes  and  onions. 
To-day  it  is  a  very  different  thing  to  reach 
the  mining-camps.  No  matter  how  high 
the  mountains  are,  your  train  can  climb 
them,  doubling  on  itself,  crossing  or  re- 
crossing  ;  or  when  the  way  is  too  steep, 
cogging  its  way  up. 

Not  long  since  I  sat  in  a  nicely  fur- 
nished room  taking  my  dinner.  My  host 
was  talking  through  a  telephone  to  a  man 
miles  away,  and  then,  with  a  good-by, 
came  back  to  the  table.  I  said,  "  That  is 
a  great  contrast  with  your  first  days  here." 
He  laughed,  and  said,  "  Yes.  The  boats 


198      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

came  up  to  where  there  are  now  great 
blocks  of  buildings ;  and  when  I  preached 
on  Sunday  afternoon,  I  always  had  a  bull 
and  a  bear  fight  to  contend  with  around 
th'e  corner.  I  remember  one  time,"  he 
said,  "  when  the  bull  broke  loose,  and  ran 
down  the  street  past  where  I  was  preach- 
ing. I  saw  at  a  glance  that  I  must  close 
the  meeting,  and  so  pronounced  the  ben- 
ediction ;  when  I  opened  my  eyes  not 
a  living  soul  was  in  sight  except  my 
wife." 

At  another  time  he  approached  two 
miners  who  were  at  work ;  and  he  told 
them  he  was  building  a  little  church,  and 
thought  they  might  like  to  help.  "  Yes," 
said  one  of  them,  "  you  ain't  the  first  man 
that's  been  around  here  a-beggin'  fer  a 
orphan  asylum.  You  git !  "  And  as  this 
was  accompanied  with  a  loaded  revolver 
levelled  at  him,  he  obeyed.  They  were 
good  men,  but  thought  he  was  a  gambler, 
as  he  had  on  a  black  suit.  When  they  af- 
terwards found  out  that  he  was  all  right, 
they  helped  him.  Gambling  in  all  min- 


IN   THE   MINER'S   CAMP.  199 

ing-camps  was  the  common  amusement. 
Some  little  camps  had  scarcely  anything 
in  sight  but  gambling-saloons,  all  licensed. 

This  has  continued  even  as  late  as 
July,  1895.  The  first-  preacher  in  Dead- 
wood  stood  on  a  box  preaching  when  all 
around  him  were  saloons,  gambling- 
houses,  and  worse.  He  was  listened  to 
by  many  in  spite  of  the  turmoil  all  around 
him,  and  the  collection  was  of  gold-dust. 
It  was  accidentally  spilled  on  the  ground, 
when  some  good-hearted  miner  washed  it 
out  for  him.  The  good  man  was  shot 
the  next  day  as  he  was  going  over  the 
divide  to  preach  in  Lead  City.  The 
miners  had  nothing  to  do  with  it ;  but 
they  not  only  got  up  a  generous  collec- 
tion, but  sent  East  and  helped  the  man's 
family. 

Often  a  preacher  has  his  chapel  over  a 
saloon  where  the  audience  can  hear  the 
sharp  click  of  the  billiard-balls,  the  rattle 
of  the  dice,  and  the  profanity  of  the  crowd 
below.  One  day  a  man  who  was  rapidly 
killing  himself  with  drink  recited  in  a 


200      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER, 

voice  so  that  all  in  the  little  church  could 
hear  him  :  — 

"  There  is  a  spirit  above, 
There  is  a  spirit  below, 
A  spirit  of  joy, 
A  spirit  of  woe. 
The  spirit  above 
Is  the  spirit  divine, 
The  spirit  below 
Is  the  spirit  of  wine." 

It  was  hard  work  under  such  circum- 
stances to  hold  an  audience.  From  the 
room  where  the  man  preached  twelve 
saloons  were  in  sight,  and  the  audience 
could  hear  the  blasting  from  the  mines 
beneath  them.  The  communion  had  to 
be  held  at  night,  as  the  deacons  were  in 
the  mine  all  day.  And  yet  those  that  did 
come  were  in  earnest,  I  think.  The  very 
deviltry  and  awfulness  of  sin  drove  some 
men  to  a  better  life  who  under  other  con- 
ditions would  never  have  gone  to  church. 
Many  men  were  hanged  for  stealing  horses, 
very  few  for  killing  a  man  ;  while  many  a 
would-be  suicide  has  been  saved  by  the 
efforts  of  a  true-hearted  minute-man.  No 


IN   TflE   MINER'S   CAMP.  2OI 

one  but  a  genuine  lover  of  his  kind  can  do 
much  good  among  the  miners.  In  no 
place  is  a  man  weighed  quicker.  The 
miners  are  a  splendid  lot  to  work  with, 
and  none  more  gallant  and  respectful  to 
a  good  woman  in  the  world. 

The  free  and  easy  style  of  a  frontiers- 
man is  refreshing.  You  never  hear  the 
question  as  to  whether  the  other  half  of 
your  seat  is  engaged;  although,  if  you 
are  a  minister  in  regulation  dress,  you 
will  often  have  the  seat  to  yourself.  I  re- 
member once,  when  travelling  in  a  part 
of  the  country  where  both  lumbermen  and 
miners  abounded,  a  big  man  sat  down 
by  my  side.  He  dropped  into  the  seat 
like  a  bag  'of  potatoes.  After  a  moment's 
look  at  me,  he  said,  "Live  near  here?" 

-Yes,  at ." 

"  Umph  !     In  business  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  I  have  the  biggest  business  in 
the  place." 

"  I  want  to  know.     You  ain't  Wilcox?" 

"  I   know  that." 

"Well,  don't  he  own  that  mill?" 


202      MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE   FRONTIER. 

"  Yes;  but  I  have  a  bigger  business  than 
any  mill." 

"  What  are  you,  then?" 

"  I  am  a  home  missionary." 

The  laugh  the  giant  greeted  this  with 
stopped  all  the  games  and  conversation  in 
the  car  for  a  moment;  but  I  was  able  to 
give  him  a  good  half-hour's  talk,  which 
ended  by  his  saying,  "  Well,  Elder,  if  I 
am  ever  near  your  place,  I  am  coming 
to  hear  ye,  sure." 

I  was  often  taken  for  a  commercial  trav- 
eller, and  asked  what  house  I  was  travel- 
ling for.  I  invariably  said,  "  The  oldest 
house  in  the  country,"  and  that  we  were 
doing  a  bigger  business  than  ever.  "What 
line  of  goods  do  you  carry?"  the  man 
would  ask,  looking  at  my  grip.  "  Wine  and 
milk,  without  money  and  without  price. 
Can  I  sell  you  an  order  ? " 

At  first  the  man  would  hardly  believe 
I  was  a  preacher.  I  remember  talking 
for  an  hour  on  the  boat  with  one  young 
man,  and  after  leaving  him  I  began  to 
read  my  Bible.  He  saw  me  reading, 


IN   THE   MINER'S   CAMP.  203 

and  said,  "Oh!  come  off,  now;  that's 
too  thin." 

"What  is  the  matter?"  I  said.  "  Do 
you  mean  that  the  paper  is  thin  ?  It  is ; 
but  there's  nothing  thin  about  the  read- 
ing." 

He  at  once  whispered  to  the  captain  ; 
and  after  the  captain  had  answered  him, 
he  came  over  and  apologized.  "  Why  did 
you  not  tell  me  you  were  a  minister  ?  " 

"  I  had  no  reason  to,"  I  said.  "  Did 
I  say  anything  in  my  talk  with  you  of  an 
unchristian  nature  ?  " 

"No;  but  I  should  never  have  known 
you  were  a  minister  by  your  clothes." 

"  No ;  and  I  don't  propose  that  my  tailor 
shall  have  the  ministerial  part  of  my  make- 
up."_ 

Time  was  when  every  trade  was  known 
by  the  clothes  worn,  and  the  minister  is 
about  the  only  one  to  keep  his  sign  up. 
It  is  just  as  well  on  the  frontier  for  him 
to  be  known  by  his  life,  his  deeds,  and 
his  words.  The  young  man  above  had 
been  a  wide  reader;  and  for  two  hours 


204      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

that  night  under  the  veranda  of  our  hotel 
I  talked  with  him,  and  afterwards  had  some 
very  interesting  letters  from  him. 

The  town  that  same  night  was  filled  with 
wild  revelry.  It  was  on  the  eve  of  the 
Fourth  of  July,  and  newly  sworn-in  depu- 
ties swarmed ;  rockets  and  pistols  were 
fired  with  fatal  carelessness  ;  and  yet 
amidst  it  all  we  sat  and  talked,  so  in- 
tensely interested  was  the  man  in  regard 
to  his  soul. 

I  close  this  chapter  with  a  portion  of  Dr. 
McLean's  sermon  on  the  flowing  well  (he 
was  the  man  our  minute-man  was  talking 
with  by  telephone  mentioned  in  the  first 
part  of  this  chapter)  which  will  show  how 
well  it  pays  to  place  the  gospel  in  our 
new  settlement :  — 

"The  first  instance  of  which  I  myself  happen 
to  have  had  some  personal  observation,  is  of  a  well 
opened  thirty  years  ago.  Fifteen  persons  met  in  a 
little  house,  still  standing,  in  what  was  then  a  com- 
munity of  less  than  fifteen  hundred  souls.  They 
came  to  talk  and  counsel,  for  they  were  men  and 
women  in  touch  with  God.  They  were  considering 
the  matter  of  a  flowing  well  of  the  spiritual  sort. 


IN   THE   MINER'S   CAMP.  205 

There  was  the  valley,  opportunity ;  and  there  was 
the  lack  of  sufficient  religious  ministration.  The 
moral  aspect  of  the  place  could  not  be  better  sur- 
mised than  by  the  prophets  word,  '  Tongue  faileth 
for  thirst.' 

"  They  consulted  and  prayed,  and  said,  '  We'll 
do  it !  '  They  joined  heart  and  hand,  declaring, 
'  Cost  what  it  may,  we'll  sink  the  well ! '  And  they 
did.  But  ah,  it  was  a  stern  task.  For  many  a  day 
those  fifteen  and  the  few  others  who  joined  them  ate 
the  bread  of  self-denial.  Delicately  reared  women 
dismissed  their  household  help  and  did  the  work 
themselves.  Enterprising,  ambitious  men  turned 
resolutely  away  from  golden  schemes,  and  made 
their  small  invested  capital  still  smaller.  A  few 
days  later  on  (it  will  be  thirty  years  the  ninth  of 
next  December)  eight  men  and  seven  women, 
standing  up  together  in  a  little  borrowed  room, 
solemnly  plighted  their  faith,  and  joyfully  cove- 
nanted to  established  a  church  of  Christ  of  the 
Pilgrim  order. 

"  What  has  been  the  outcome  of  that  faith  and 
self-denial  ?  It  has  borne  true  Abrahamic  fruit. 
There  stands  to-day,  on  that  foundation,  a  church 
of  more  than  eleven  hundred  members.  It  has 
multiplied  its  original  seventeen  by  more  than  the 
hundred  fold,  having  received  to  its  membership 
one  thousand  nine  hundred  and  fifty-six  souls,  of 
whom  one-half  have  come  upon  confession.  It  is 
a  church  which  is  teaching  to-day  seventeen  hun- 


206      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

dred  in  its  Sunday-schools;  possesses  an  enrolled 
battalion  of  two  hundred  valiant  soldiers  of  Chris- 
tian Endeavor,  which  maintains  kindergartens  and 
all  manner  of  mission-industrial  work  ;  and  held  the 
pledge,  at  a  recent  census,  of  thirteen  hundred  and 
twenty-two  persons  to  total  abstinence.  It  has  a 
constituency  of  one  thousand  families.  It  reaches 
each  week,  with  some  form  of  religious  ministration, 
two  thousand  five  hundred  persons,  and  has  five 
thousand  regularly  looking  to  it  for  their  spiritual 
supplies.  To  as  many  more,  doubtless,  does  it  an- 
nually furnish,  in  some  incidental  way,  at  least  a 
cup  of  cold  water  in  the  Master's  name.  It  is  a 
church  which  has  been  privileged  of  God  in  its 
thirty  years  to  bring  forth  nine  more  churches 
within  the  field  itself  originally  occupied,  and 
to  lend  a  hand  frequently  with  members,  habit- 
ually with  money  in  it,  to  four  times  nine  new 
churches  in  fields  outside  its  own.  It  is  a  church 
also,  which,  with  no  credit  to  itself,  —  for,  brethren, 
only  sink  the  well,  pipe  it,  keep  an  open  flow,  and  it 
is  God  who,  from  his  bare  heights  and  the  rivers 
opened  on  them,  will  supply  the  water,  —  it  is  a 
church  which  has  enjoyed  the  great  blessedness 
of  contributing  its  part  to  every  good  thing  in  a 
growing  city  which  has  grown  in  the  thirty  years 
from  fifteen  hundred  to  sixty  thousand  souls.  This 
church,  having  been  enabled  to  help  on  almost  every 
good  thing  in  its  State,  is  recognized  to-day  through- 
out a  widely  extended  territory  as  an  adjunct  and 


IN   THE   MINER'S   CAMP.  2O/ 

auxiliary  of  all  good  things  in  morals,  politics, 
in  charity,  and  the  general  humanities,  —  a  power 
for  God  and  good  in  a  population  which,  already 
dense,  is  fast  becoming  one  of  the  ganglion  centres 
of  American  civilization.  It  is  also  laying  its  ser- 
viceable touch  upon  trans-oceanic  continents  and 
intervening  islands  of  the  sea.  It  has  furnished 
ministers  for  the  pulpit,  and  sent  Sunday-school 
superintendents  and  Christian  workers  out  over  a 
wide  area ;  it  has  consecrated  already  six  mission- 
aries to  foreign  service,  and  has  two  others  under 
appointment  by  the  board  ;  and  as  for  wives  to 
missionaries  and  ministers,  brethren,  you  should 
just  see  those  predatory  tribes  swoop  down  upon 
its  girls  ! 

"  It  is  a  true  flowing  well  in  the  midst  of  a  valley. 
Ah  !  those  fifteen  who  met  thirty  years  ago  next 
October  made  no  mistake.  They  were  within 
God's  artesian  belt.  Their  divining-rod  was  not  mis- 
leading. Their  call  was  genuine ;  their  aim  uner- 
ring. They  struck  the  vein.  The  flow  of  the  rivers 
breaking  out  from  bare  heights  did  not  disappoint 
them.  And  now  behold  this  wide  expanse  of  spir- 
itual fertility !  This  church  was  not,  in  form,  a 
daughter  of  the  American  Home  Missionary  So- 
ciety. Its  name  does  not  appear  upon  your  family 
record,  and  yet,  in  the  true  sense,  it  is  your  daughter. 
In  its  infant  days  it  sucked  the  breasts  of  churches 
which  had  sucked  yours.  Its  swaddling  bands 
you  made.  It  was  glad  to  get  them  even  at 


208      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

second  hand.  The  other  instance  I  have  to  quote 
is  of  but  recent  standing,  —  of  not  thirty  years,  but 
only  three. 

"  On  the  26th  of  May,  three  years  ago,  a  pastor  in 
Central  California  was  called  five  hundred  miles 
into  the  southern  part  of  the  State  to  assist  in  or- 
ganizing a  Pilgrim  church.  A  good  part  of  the 
proposing  members  being  from  his  own  flock,  their 
appeal  was  urgent,  and  was  acceded  to.  An  infant 
organization  of  a  few  persons  was  brought  together, 
and  christened  the  Pilgrim  Church  of  Pomona. 
The  organization  was  effected  in  a  public  hall, 
loaned  for  the  occasion  ;  the  church's  stipulated 
tenure  of  the  premises  expiring  at  precisely  3  P.  M., 
in  order  that  the  room  might  be  put  in  order  for 
theatrical  occupancy  at  night.  The  accouchment 
was  therefore  naturally  a  hurried  one.  The  consti- 
tuting services  had  to  be  abbreviated.  Among  the 
things  cast  out  was  the  sermon,  which  the  visiting 
pastor  from  the  north  had  come  five  hundred  miles 
to  preach.  Well,  sweet  are  the  uses  of  adversity! 
Never,  apparently,  did  loss  so  small  gain  work  so 
great.  On  the  lack  of  that  initiatory  sermon  the 
Pilgrim  Church  of  Pomona  has  most  wonderfully 
thriven.  The  church  was  poor  at  the  outset.  It 
possessed  no  foot  of  ground,  no  house  ;  only  a 
Bible,  a  dozen  hymn-books,  and  as  many  zealous 
members.  Over  this  featherless  chick  was  spread 
the  brooding  wing  of  the  American  Home  Mission- 
ary Society.  'It  was  a  plucky  bird,'  said  the  wise- 


IN   THE    MINER'S   CAMP,  2Og 

hearted  pastor,  already  on  the  ground.  '  Here's  a 
case  where  the  questionable  old  saw,  "  Half  a  loaf 
better  than  no  bread,"  won't  work  at  all.  If  this 
new  well  is  to  be  driven,  it  must  be  driven  to  the 
vein.  If  there  is  to  be  but  surface  digging,  let  there 
be  none.  If  the  American  Home  Missionary  society 
will  supply  us  with  six  hundred  dollars  for  the  first 
six  months,  we'll  make  no  promises,  but  we'll  do 
the  best  we  can.'  Well,  the  G.  O.  S.  —  Grand  Old 
Society  — responded,  and  gave  the  six  hundred  for 
the  desired  six  months.  At  the  expiration  of  that 
period  the  Pilgrim  Church  of  Pomona,  located  upon 
land  and  in  a  house  of  its  own,  bade  its  temporary 
foster-mother  a  grateful  good-by ;  and,  as  it  did  so, 
put  back  into  her  hand  two  hundred  of  the  six 
hundred  dollars  which  had  been  given.  What  has 
been  the  outcome  ?  That  noble  church,  headed  by 
a  noble  Massachusetts  pastor,  has  become  in  the 
matter  of  home  missions  at  least  —  but  not  in  home 
missions  only  —  the  leading  church  of  Southern 
California.  It  has  to-day  an  enrolment  of  two 
hundred  and  twenty ;  has  contributed  this  year 
three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  to  your  society. 
Alert  in  all  activities  of  its  own,  it  is  a  stimulus  to 
all  those  of  its  neighbors.  It  had  not  yet  got  for- 
mally organized —  the  audacious  little  strutling  !  — 
before  it  had  made  a  cool  proposition  to  the  hand- 
ful of  Pilgrim  churches  then  existing  in  Southern 
California  for  the  creation  of  a  college  ;  secured  the 
location  in  its  own  town  ;  itself  appointed  the  first 


210       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

board  of  trust ;  and  named  it  Pomona  College.  It 
never  waited  to  be  hatched  before  it  began  to  crow ; 
and  to  such  purpose  that  it  crowed  up  a  college, 
which  now  owhs  two  hundred  acres  of  choice  land, 
has  a  subscription-list  of  twenty-five  thousand  dol- 
lars for  buildings,  besides  a  present  building  costing 
two  hundred  and  five  thousand  dollars.  It  has  in  its 
senior  class  eleven  students,  in  its  preparatory  de- 
partment seventy-one ;  and  in  a  recent  revival  in- 
terest numbers  a  goodly  group  of  converts ;  and, 
finally,  the  general  association  of  Southern  Califor- 
nia, at  its  meeting  within  a  month,  committed  its 
fifty  churches  fully  to  the  subject  of  Christian  edu- 
cation, to  the  annual  presentation  of  the  advantages 
and  claims  of  Pomona  College,  and  to  an  annual 
collection  for  its  funds.  All  this,  brethren,  out  of 
one  of  your  flowing  wells  in  three  years." 


THE   SABBATH   ON   THE   FRONTIER.      211 

XXI. 

THE    SABBATH    ON    THE    FRONTIER. 

WE  hear  a  good  deal  of  talk  about  the 
American  Sabbath,  so  that  one  would  think 
it  was  first  introduced  here  ;  and,  indeed, 
the  American  Sabbath  is  our  own  patent. 
Not  but  what  Scotland  and  rural  England 
had  one  somewhat  like  it ;  but  the  Amer- 
ican Sabbath  par  excellence  is  not  the 
Jewish  Sabbath,  or  the  European  Sabbath, 
but  the  Sunday  of  Puritan  New  England, 
which  is  generally  meant  when  we  hear  of 
the  American  Sabbath.  But  the  American 
Sabbath  of  the  frontier  can  never  become 
the  European  Sabbath  without  getting 
nearer  to  the  New  England  type  ;  for  in 
Europe  people  do  go  to  church  in  the 
morning,  if  they  attend  the  beer-gardens 
in  the  afternoon.  The  Sabbath  of  the 
frontier  has  no  church,  and  the  beer-garden 
is  open  all  day. 


212      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

Some  reader  will  wonder  what  kind  of  a 
deacon  a  man  would  make  who  worked  on 
Sunday.  Well,  he  might  be  better ;  but, 
remember,  that  for  one  deacon  who  breaks 
the  Sabbath,  there  are  ten  thousand  who 
break  the  tenth  commandment,  which  is 
just  as  important.  The  fact  is,  you  must 
do  the  best  you  can  under  the  circum- 
stances, and  wait  for  the  next  generation 
to  go  up  higher.  It  is  no  use  finding  fault 
with  candles  for  the  poor  light  and  the 
smell  of  the  tallow.  There  is  only  one 
way  :  you  must  light  the  gas  ;  and  it,  too, 
must  go  when  electricity  comes.  You 
might  as  well  expect  concrete  roads, 
Beethoven's  Symphonies,  and  the  Paris 
opera,  as  to  have  all  the  conditions  of  New 
England  life  to  start  with  under  such  en- 
vironments. Man  has  greater  power  to 
accommodate  himself  to  new  conditions 
than  the  beasts  that  perish  ;  nevertheless, 
he  is  subject  to  them,  at  least  for  a  time. 

I  know  some  will  be  thinking  of  the  Pil- 
grim Fathers,  staying  in  the  little  May- 
flower rather  than  break  the  Sabbath ;  but 


THE   SABBATH  ON   THE   FRONTIER.      213 

we  must  not  forget,  that,  as  a  rule,  the 
frontiers  are  not  peopled  with  Pilgrim 
Fathers.  It  is  true,  the  wildest  settlers 
are  not  altogether  bad ;  for  you  could  have 
seen  on  their  prairie  schooners  within  the 
last  year  these  words,  "  In  God  we  trusted, 
in  Kansas  we  busted  ; "  which  is  much 
more  reverent  than  "  Pike's  Peak  or  bust," 
if  not  quite  so  terse. 

This  is  not  meant  for  sarcasm.  These 
words  were  written  in  a  county  that  has 
been  settled  over  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  and  has  not  had  a  murderer  in  its 
jail  yet,  where  the  people  talk  as  if  they 
were  but  lately  from  Cornwall,  where  the 
descendants  of  Mayhew  still  live, — May- 
hew,  who  was  preaching  to  the  Indians 
before  the  saintly  Eliot. 

We  must  remember,  too,  that  the  good 
men  who  first  settled  at  Plymouth  could 
do  things  conscientiously  that  your  fron- 
tiersman would  be  shocked  at.  Think, 
too,  of  good  John  Hawkins  sailing  about 
in  the  ship  Jesus  with  her  hold  full  of 
negroes,  and  pious  New  Englanders  sell- 


214      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIE 

ing  slaves  in  Deerfield  less  than  a  hun- 
dred and  ten  years  ago ;  of  the  whipping- 
post and  the  persecuting  of  witches  ;  and 
that  these  good  men,  who  would  not  break 
the  Sabbath,  often  in  their  religious  zeal 
broke  human  hearts.  No  living  man  re- 
spects them  more  than  I  do.  You  cannot 
sing  Mrs.  Hemans's  words, 

"  The  breaking  waves  dashed  high," 

without  the  tears  coming  to  these  eyes  ; 
and  one  sight  of  Burial  Hill  buries  all  hard 
thoughts  I  might  have  about  their  stern 
rule.  They  were  fitted  for  the  times  they 
lived  in,  and  we  must  see  to  it  that  we  do 
our  part  in  our  time. 

In  my  first  field  I  well  remember  being 
startled  at  a  tiny  girl  singing  out,  "  Hello, 
Elder !  "  and  on  looking  up  there  was  a 
batch  of  youngsters  from  the  Sunday- 
school  playing  croquet  on  Sunday  after- 
noon. "  Hello !  "  said  I  ;  and  I  smiled 
and  walked  on.  Wicked,  was  it  not  ?  I 
ought  to  have  lectured  them  ?  Oh,  yes ! 
and  lost  them.  Were  they  playing  a  year 


THE   SABBATH  ON   THE  FRONTIER.      21$ 

after?  Not  one  of  them.  And,  better 
still,  the  parents,  who  were  non-church- 
goers, had  joined  the  church. 

The  saloons  and  stores  were  open,  and 
doing1  a  big  business,  the  first  year;  but 
both  saloons  and  stores  were  closed,  side- 
cloors  too,  after  that.  Some  of  the  saloon- 
keepers' boys,  who  played  base-ball  on 
Sunday,  were  in  the  Sunday-school  and 
members  of  a  temperance  society.  These 
saloon-keepers,  and  men  who  were  not 
church-members,  paid  dollar  for  dollar 
with  the  Christians  who  sent  missionary 
money  to  support  the  little  church  ;  and 
not  only  that,  but  paid  into  the  benevo- 
lences of  the  church  from  five  to  twenty- 
five  dollars.  There  is  no  possible  way  so 
good  of  getting  men  to  be  better  as  to  get 
them  to  help  in  a  good  cause.  I  know 
men  who  would  not  take  money  that  came 
from  the  saloon ;  but  I  did.  I  remembered 
the  words,  "  The  silver  and  the  gold  are 
mine,"  and  Paul's  saying,  "  Ask  no  ques- 
tion for  conscience'  sake."  We  might  as 
well  blame  the  Creator  for  growing  the 


2l6       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

barley  because  of  its  being  put  to  a  bad 
use,  as  to  blame  a  man  for  using  the 
money  because  it  came  from  a  bad  busi- 
ness. Men  ought  to  use  common  sense, 
even  in  religious  things. 

When  a  man  hitches  up  his  horse  on 
Sunday  morning  and  drives  fifty  miles  that 
day  and  preaches  four  times,  we  admire 
his  zeal.  There  are  some  who  will  not 
blame  him  if  he  hires**  a  livery  rig,  who 
would  condemn  him  if  he  rode  on  the 
street-cars  or  railway.  I  well  remember 
a  good  man,  who  was  to  speak  in  a  church 
a  few  miles  away,  saying  to  me,  "  How 
shall  we  get  there?"  I  said,  "The  street- 
cars go  right  past  the  door." 

"  Oh  !   I  can't  ride  in  a  street-car." 

"  Why  ?     Make  you  sick  ?  " 

It  never  came  into  my  head  that  the 
man  meant  he  could  not  ride  on  Sunday 
in  a  street-car. 

"  I  will  tell  you,"  said  he,  "  what  we 
will  do.  I  will  get  a  livery  rig." 

I  was  much  amused,  and  bantered  him, 
and  said,  — 


THE  SABBATH  ON   THE   FRONTIER.      21  / 

"  I  don't  know  about  breaking  the  Sab- 
bath fifty  per  cent.  I  am  willing  to  plead 
limited  liability  with  a  hundred  others  in 
the  street-car." 

Just  then  a  man  drove  up  with  a  buggy 
who  had  been  sent  for  us.  It  seemed 
to  take  a  load  off  my  friend's  mind. 
Now,  there  are  men  who  would  condemn 
a  man  for  this,  and  say  he  should  walk ; 
and  I  know  men  who  walk  ten  and 
twelve  miles  on  Sunday.  If  that  is  not 
work  I  do  not  know  what  is.  This 
month  I  saw  an  article  in  a  paper  con- 
demning the  young  people  who  had  to 
ride  on  Sunday  to  reach  their  meeting. 
The  writer  would  not  have  them  travel, 
even  in  an  emergency.  I  wonder  when 
the  Pilgrims  would  have  reached  us  on 
that  basis.  It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  May- 
flower to  the  Lucania.  Is  the  Sabbath 
greater  than  its  Lord  ?  I  was  told  of 
one  preacher  who  was  so  particular  that 
he  sent  word  that  no  appointment  must 
be  made  for  him  that  involved  street- 
car or  railway  travel.  So  a  horse  was 


2l8      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

driven  ten  miles  to  fetch  him,  and  ten 
miles  to  take  him  back.  When  the  horse 
reached  his  stable  that  night  he  had 
travelled  forty  miles  to  keep  this  man 
from  breaking  the  Sabbath.  Who  gave 
these  brethren  the  right  to  work  their 
horses  this  way,  and  break  the  Sabbath? 
If  Moses  had  a  man  stoned  to  death  for 
gathering  sticks  on  the  Sabbath,  what 
right  have  you  to  be  toasting  your  shins 
over  a  register  that  your  man-servant 
must  keep  going  evenly  or  catch  it?  In 
short,  what  right  has  any  man  to  tamper 
with  one  of  the  commandments  to  suit 
himself,  and  place  the  remainder  higher 
than  love  to  his  neighbor  ? 

So  long  as  the  frontier  Sabbath  is  what 
it  is,  it  will  be  lawful  to  do  good  on  the 
Sabbath  day.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  un- 
dervalue the  Sabbath.  I  value  it  highly, 
but  I  value  freedom  more.  The  man  who 
rides  in  his  carriage  to  church  has  no 
right  to  condemn  my  riding  in  the  street- 
car, and  he  who  rides  in  the  street-car  has 
no  right  to  judge  the  man  on  the  train. 


THE   SABBATH  ON   THE   FRONTIER.      219 

"  Who  art  thou  that  judgest  another  man's 
servant?"  "  One  man  esteemeth  one  day 
above  another ;  another  esteemeth  every 
day  alike.  Let  every  man  be  fully  per- 
suaded in  his  own  mind."  "  Stand  fast, 
therefore,  in  the  liberty  wherewith  Christ 
hath  made  us  free,  and  be  not  entangled 
again  with  the  yoke  of  bondage." 


22O      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER, 


XXII. 

THE    FRONTIER    OF   THE    SOUTH-WEST. 

THE  South-west  is  different  from  all 
other  parts  of  the  country.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  everywhere  else  in  the  ascendant. 
Here  the  Latin  races  are  dominant.  It  is 
astonishing  to  find  so  many  oldest  churches 
all  over  the  country.  The  superlative  is  a 
national  trait.  We  have  either  the  oldest 
or  the  youngest,  the  greatest  or  the  small- 
est, or  the  only  thing  in  the  world.  How- 
ever, it  is  almost  certain  that  the  oldest 
church  and  house  are  to  be  found  in  Santa 
Fe.  The  Church  of*  San  Miguel  was  built 
seventy  years  before  the  landing  of  the 
Pilgrims,  and  .  the  house  next  to  the 
church  fifty  years.  It  is  the  oldest  set- 
tled, is  the  farthest  behind,  has  the  most 
church-members  per  capita,  and  is  the 
most  ignorant  and  superstitious  part  of 
the  land.  In  one  part  Mormonism  holds 


THE   FRONTIER   OF   THE  SOUTH-WEST.      221 

sway.  In  the  other,  Roman  Catholicism 
of  two  centuries  ago  is  still  the  prevail- 
ing religion. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  ;  but  in  this  latter 
respect  the  North-east  and  the  South-west 
almost  join  hands  ;  for  Lower  Canada  sent 
us  Old  France,  and  the  South-west  re- 
mains Old  Spain.  Here,  as  a  man  travels 
through  Western  Texas,  New  Mexico,  and 
Arizona,  only  his  Pullman  car,  and  es- 
pecially his  Pullman  porter,  makes  him 
realize  that  he  is  in  America.  In  the 
eastern  part  of  Texas  the  buzzards  fill 
the  air  as  they  are  hovering  over  the 
dead  cattle.  In  the  western  part  the 
dead  cattle  dry  up  and  are  blown  away. 
Meat  keeps  indefinitely.  There  are  no 
flies  there,  few  insects,  and  the  flowers  are 
almost  odorless,  perhaps  on  account  of  the 
lack  of  insect-life.  The  very  butcher- signs 
look  strange.  Instead  of  the  fat,  meek  ox 
on  a  sign,  we  have  a  mad  bull  charging  a 
Spanish  matador. 

Here  comes  a  Mexican  with  a  fifty-dol- 
lar hat  on  his  head,  and  fifty  cents  would 


222       MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

almost  buy  the  rest  of  his  clothes.  He 
marches  by  with  the  strut  of  a  drum-major. 
The  best  streets  and  the  finest  houses  are 
often  not  homes.  The  plains  look  as  if 
they  would  not  keep  a  cow  alive  ;  and  yet 
here  in  the  South-west  we  find  some  of  the 
finest  grazing-lands  in  the  world,  although 
it  takes  twenty-five  acres  to  feed  a  cow. 
But  what  of  that  ?  the  acres  are  unlimited. 
The  black-tailed  antelope  are  seen  running 
from  your  train ;  while  the  prairie-dog  sits, 
like  all  small  things,  barking  impudently, 
or,  with  a  few  electric  twists  of  his  little 
tail  he  dives  below,  where  a  rattlesnake 
and  an  owl  keep  his  house  in  order,  i.e.,. 
keep  the  population  down  so  that  the 
progeny  would  not  kill  all  the  grass,  and 
so  starve  at  last ;  with  himself  would  go 
the  cattle  ;  so  the  economy  of  nature 
keeps  up  its  reputation  everywhere.  As 
some  have  said,  when  salmon  are  scarce 
hens'  eggs  become  dear ;  for  the  otter 
takes  to  the  land  and  kills  the  rabbits, 
and  the  weasel,  finding  his  stores  low, 
visits  the  hen-coops  —  and  up  goes  the 
price  of  eggs. 


THE   FRONTIER   OF   THE  SOUTH-WEST,      22$ 

The  minute-man  in  the  South-west  has  a 
big  field.  He  is  often  hundreds  of  miles 
from  his  next  church.  He  preaches  to  the 
cowboys  one  day,  to  the  Digger  Indians 
or  the  blanket  variety  the  next.  He  is  off 
among  the  miners,  and  sometimes  in  less 
than  four  hours  he  must  change  from  the 

o 

cold  mountain  air  to  the  heat  which  re- 
quires two  roofs  to  the  house  in  order  to 
keep  it  cool  enough.  He  eats  steak  that 
has  come  one  thousand  miles  from  the 
East,  although  ten  thousand  cattle  are  all 
about  him.  He  passes  a  million  cows, 
and  yet  has  to  use  condensed  milk  for 
his  coffee  or  go  without. 

He  finds  himself  in  the  midst  of  the 
grandest  scenery  on  the  continent.  In  his 
long  journey  he  often  finds  himself  sleep- 
ing on  the  plain  outside  the  teepees  of  his 
red  brother,  rather  risking  the  tarantulas, 
lizards,  and  rattlers  that  may  come,  than 
the  thousands  of  smaller  nuisances  that 
are  sure  to  come  if  he  goes  under  cover. 
He  is  in  the  midst  of  a  past  age  ;  and  as 
he  visits  the  pueblos,  he  would  not  be  sur- 


224      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

prised  to  see  De  Soto  come  forth,  so 
Spanish  are  his  surroundings.  The  adobe 
building  prevails  everywhere,  cool  in  sum- 
mer, warm  in  winter,  and  in  this  climate 
well  nigh  indestructible. 

The  priesthood  are  centuries  removed 
from  those  of  the  East.  Here  he  will 
meet  with  men  living  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
beating  their  backs  with  cactus  until  the 
blood  streams,  and  often  dying  under 
self-inflicted  blows.  We  often  hear  of 
America  having  no  ruins,  no  ancient  his- 
tory. This  may  be  so  in  regard  to  time  ; 
but  in  regard  to  conditions  we  are  in  the 
time  of  Boadicea  of  the  ancient  Briton, 
and  in  the  South-west  are  ruins  of  build- 
ings that  were  inhabited  when  William 
was  crowned  at  Westminster.  So  great  are 
the  States  of  the  South-west  that  the  coun- 
ties are  larger  than  New  England  States ; 
and  you  may  be  stuck  in  a  blizzard  in  north- 
ern Texas,  while  people  in  the  southern 
portion  are  eating  oranges  out-doors  with 
the  oleanders  for  shade-trees. 

I  will  close  this  chapter  with  a  descrip- 


THE  FRONTIER   OF   THE  SOUTH-WEST.      22$ 

tion  given  me  in  part  by  the  Rev.  E. 
Lyman  Hood,  who  was  Superintendent  of 
Missions  in  the  South-west  until  he  was 
broken  down  by  his  arduous  toil. 

One  evening  he  found  himself  at  the 
opening  of  an  immense  canon,  on  the  lofty 
tops  of  which  the  snow  was  perpetual. 
Sheltered  beneath  its  mighty  walls,  flowers 
of  semi-tropical  luxuriance  flourished, 
and  birds  of  gorgeous  plumage  flitted 
here  and  there  ;  while  humming-birds,  like 
balls  of  metal,  darted  among  the  flowers. 
A  little  silver  streamlet  ran  down  the 
canon  until  lost  in  the  blue  distance ;  and 
here  our  minute-man  stood  lost  in  rev- 
erent admiration.  The  sun  was.  going 
down  in  pomp  of  purple  and  gold ;  and 
the  little  stream  changed  its  colors  with 
the  clouds,  until  in  a  moment  it  became 
black;- a  cold  wind  came  down  the  canon, 
the  flowers  closed  their  petals,  and  with  a 
twitter  here  and  there  the  birds  went  to 
roost.  And  then  our  minute-man  looked 
up  aloft,  where  the  sun  still  gilded  the 
great  canon's  shoulders  until  they  glowed 


226      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

like  molten  metal,  and  kissed  the  forehead 
of  an  Indian  who  stood  like  a  statue  wait- 
ing the  sun's  setting.  Another  moment 
and  it  was  gone,  and  our  Indian  stood  like 
a  silhouette  against  the  sky,  when  he  at 
once  wheeled  toward  the  east,  and,  stoop- 
ing, lit  a  fire ;  then  drawing  his  ragged 
blanket  around  him,  prepared  to  watch 
all  night  until  the  sun  came  up  in  the  east- 
ern horizon,  watching  for  the  return  of  his 
Saviour  Montezuma.  And  thus  far  he  has 
watched  in  vain. 

A  strange  fact,  —  a  poor  tribe  still  wait- 
ing and  watching  for  a  Saviour  in  a  land 
where  there  are  over  twenty  million  church- 
members,  some  of  whom  ride  past  him  in 
their  palace-cars  to  take  a  palatial  steamer, 
and  travel  thousands  of  miles  to  find  a  soul 
to  save.  Over  twelve  denominations  striv- 
ing in  Mexico  to.  win  souls,  and  scarcely  a 
thing  done  for  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  Mexicans  in  our  own  land,  and  over 
forty  tribes  of  Indians.  And  all  this  in  the 
year  of  our  Lord  1895. 


DARK  PLACES   OF   THE   INTERIOR.       22  J 


XXIII. 

DARK    PLACES    OF    THE    INTERIOR. 

I  WANT  to  picture  out  in  this  chapter 
one  of  the  hardest  fields  the  minute-man 
has  to  labor  in.  I  think  there  are  greater 
inequalities  to  be  found  in  our  land  than 
in  any  other,  at  least  a  greater  variety  of 
social  conditions.  Times  have  changed 
much  in  the  last  twenty-five  years.  The 
consolidating  of  great  business  concerns 
has  made  a  wide  gulf  between  the  em- 
ployer and  employee  such  as  never  be- 
fore existed  outside  of  slavery. 

It  is  not  true  to  say  that  the  rich  are 
growing  richer,  and  the  poor  poorer ;  for 
the  poor  could  not  be  poorer.  There  never 
was  a  time  when  men  were  not  at  starva- 
tion-point in  some  places.  We  have  to- 
day thousands  of  men  who  never  saw  the 
owner  of  the  property  that  they  work  up- 
on. There  is  a  fearful  distance  between 


228      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

the  gentlemen  and  ladies  in  their  four- 
in-hand  turnout  and  the  begrimed  men 
who  come  up  into  the  daylight  out  of  our 
great  coal-mines,  or  those  who  handle  the 
heavy  iron  ore.  I  have  seen  men  whose 
hands  could  be  pared  like  a  horse's  hoof 
without  drawing  the  blood,  who  were  go- 
ing back  to  Germany  to  stay,  —  men  who 
had  been  lured  over  by  the  promise  of 
big  wages,  who,  as  they  said,  averaged 
"  feefty  cent  a  day."  I  have  seen  sixty 
and  seventy  men  living  in  a  big  hut,  with 
two  or  three  women  cooking  their  vege- 
tables in  a  great  iron  kettle,  and  dipping 
them  out  with  tin  ladles.  I  have  seen 
little  boys  by  the  score  working  for  a  few 
cents  a  day,  and  four,  five,  and  seven 
families  living  in  one  house,  and  where 
all  the  pay  was  store-pay,  and  did  not 
average  five  dollars  a  week,  and  where 
it  was  not  safe  to  walk  at  night,  and 
murder  was  common,  —  and  you  could 
find  within  a  few  miles  cities  where  there 
were  men  who  would  say  that  the  whole 
of  the  above  was  a  lie. 


DARK  PLACES  OF   THE   INTERIOR.       2  29 

When  I  first  talked  on  these  regions,  I 
could  think  of  nothing  else  ;  and  some 
good  men  advised  me  not  to  tell  of  what  I 
had  seen.  It  smacked  too  much  of  social- 
ism, they  said.  I  remarked,  "  You  will 
hear  of  starving,  bloodshed,  and  riot  from 
that  region  before  long."  And  so  they 
did.  The  State  troops  were  called  out 
more  than  once.  And  here  in  the  midst 
of  this  misery  our  minute-man  went. 
Before  the  mines  were  opened,  a  little 
stream  of  clear  water  flowed  between 
green  banks  and  through  flowery  meads  ; 
cattle  dotted  the  meadows,  and  peaceful 
farm-houses  nestled  under  the  trees.  But 
all  this  was  soon  changed.  The  green  sod 
was  turned  up,  the  clear  stream  became 
a  muddy,  discolored  torrent,  and  wretched 
little  houses  took  the  place  of  the  farm- 
houses. Low  saloons  abounded.  Our 
minute-man  was  warned  that  his  life 
would  be  in  danger.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  was  offered  three  times  the  salary  he 
was  getting  as  a  missionary  if  he  would 
become  a  foreman.  But  the  man  is  one 


230      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

of  the  last  of  that  noble  army  of  pioneers 
that  count  not  their  life  dear. 

When  our  man  tried  to  find  a  place  to 
preach,  there  was  none  save  an  old  dilap- 
idated schoolhouse.  The  window-sashes 
were  broken,  the  panels  of  the  door  gone. 
The  place  was  beyond  a  little  stream, 
which  had  to  be  crossed  upon  a  log".  It 
was  nearly  dark  before  his  audience  ar- 
rived. The  women,  much  as  they  wanted 
to  go,  were  ashamed  of  the  daylight. 
Many  of  the  young  girls  had  on  but  one 
garment.  The  men  were  a  rough-looking 
lot.  The  place  was  lighted  with  candles 
in  lanterns,  the  flames  of  which  fluttered 
with  the  draughts,  and  gutters  of  tallow 
ran  down.  What  a  contrast  to  the  church 
a  few  miles  away,  where  the  seats  were 
cushioned,  and  a  quartet  choir  sang,  "The 
Earth  is  the  Lord's,"  with  a  magnificent 
organ  accompaniment !  What  a  gulf  be- 
tween these  poor  souls  and  those  who 
came  in  late,  not  because  of  poor  clothes, 
but  because  of  fine  ones !  And  yet  I  sup- 
pose they  did  not  perceive  it,  perhaps  they 


DARK  PLACES   OF   THE   INTERIOR.       231 

did  not  know.  But  it  does  seem  to  me 
that  when  men  hear  that  "The  Earth  is 
the  Lord's,"  it  ought  to  make  them  think 
how  small  a  proportion  of  earth  they  will 
make  when  mingled  with  the  dust  from 
which  they  came. 

But  to  return  to  our  meeting.  Our 
man  is  not  from  the  colleges,  but  is  a  rare 
man  (don't  misunderstand  me.  Nothing 
is  so  much  needed  to-day  as  well-educated 
men  ;  and  I  am  not  one  of  those  who 
think  that  it  spoils  a  razor  to  sharpen  it) ; 
and  he  has  not  spoken  long  before  the  tears 
fall  fast,  and  many  a  poor  fellow  who  once 
sang  the  songs  of  Zion  comes  home  to  his 
Father's  house.  Still,  they  tell  our  man  it 
is  not  safe  for  him  to  come  ;  but  he  does  ; 
and  under  great  difficulties  he  builds  a 
church  and  parsonage.  And  then  he  tries 
to  have  a  reading-room.  Naturally  he 
thinks  that  the  man  who  is  making  so 
much  money  out  of  the  earth  will  help 
him.  He  offers  twenty-five  dollars,  which 
our  minute-man  spurns.  He  is  going  to 
give  double  that  out  of  his  meagre  sal- 


232      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

ary,  and  tells  the  man  so  ;  but  the  man's 
excuse  is  that  he  pays  four  hundred 
dollars  a  year  towards  the  church  music. 
Think  of  that.  And  he  pays  to  hear  that 
"  The  Earth  is  the  Lord's,"  and  still  does 
not  hear.  The  little  room  is  built  and 
furnished  without  his  help,  and  saves  many 
a  poor  fellow  from  drink. 

Our  man  has  several  other  places  to 
preach  in,  each  worse  than  the  other.  In 
one  town  it  is  on  Sunday  afternoon,  but  he 
has  to  wait  for  the  room  until  the  dance 
is  over.  In  another  town  he  builds  a 
church  ;  and  to  this  day  may  be  seen  the 
bullet-holes  near  the  pulpit,  where  men 
have  shot  at  him,  hoping  to  kill  their 
best  friend.  As  he  is  passing  along  the 
street  one  day  with  a  companion,  a  man 
runs  across  the  road  from  a  saloon, 
plunges  a  knife  into  the  heart  of  the 
man  who  is  walking  with  our  minute- 
man,  and  he  drops  dead*  in  his  tracks. 
Amid  such  scenes  as  this  our  hero  still 
works.  He  has  been  the  means  of  stop- 
ping more  than  one  strike  ;  and  one  would 


DARK  PLACES   OF   THE  INTERIOR,       233 

think  that  the  rich  companies  would  at 
least  give  more  than  they  do  to  help 
these  men  at  the  front,  who  would  make 
Pinkerton's  men  and  State  troops  un- 
necessary. 

In  the  meantime  the  men  are  here. 
Can  we  expect  that  these  men,  coming 
from  their  huts  on  the  Danube,  —  seeing 
our  fine  houses,  the  American  working- 
men's  children  well  clothed  and  attending 
school,  —  are  going  to  be  content  ?  Do 
we  want  them  to  be  ?  The  worst  thing 
that  could  happen  to  them  and  ourselves 
would  be  for  them  to  be  content  with 
their  present  condition.  No  greater  dan- 
ger could  menace  the  Republic  than 
thousands  of  Europeans  coming  here  to 
live,  and  remaining  in  their  present  con- 
dition. We  condemn  them  for  coming 
and  underworking  our  men  ;  and  we  con- 
demn them  when  they  want  more,  and  are 
bound  to  get  it. 

Many  say,  "  Keep  them  out."  But  there 
are  several  things  in  the  way.  Rich  cor- 
porations, mine-owners,  and  railways  are 


234      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

bound  to  get  them.  And  would  you  keep 
the  men  from  which  we  sprung  in  over- 
crowded Europe,  while  we  have  a  continent 
with  but  seventy  millions  ?  Is  there  any 
real  love  in  that  which  sends  a  missionary 
to  Europe  to  save  souls  on  the  Don,  that 
will  not  let  their  bodies  live  on  the  Hud- 
son ?  Do  we  believe  that  "The  Earth  is 
the  Lord's  "  ?  Let  me  close  this  chapter 
with  a  quotation  from  Roger  Williams's 
letter  to  the  Town  of  Providence :  — 

"I  have  only  one  motion  and  petition 
which  I  earnestly  pray  the  town  to  lay  to 
heart,  as  ever  they  look  for  a  blessing 
from  God  on  the  town,  in  your  families, 
your  corn  and  cattle,  and  your  children 
after  you.  It  is  this,  that  after  you  have 
got  over  the  black  brook  of  some  soul 
bondage  yourselves,  you  tear  not  down 
the  bridge  after  you,  by  leaving  no  small 
pittance  for  distressed  souls  that  come 
after  you." 


THE  DANGEROUS  NATIVE   CLASSES.      235 

XXIV. 

THE    DANGEROUS    NATIVE    CLASSES. 

WE  hear  much  about  the  dangerous 
foreigners  that  come  to  us,  but  little  about 
the  dangerous  native.  There  is  not  a 
type,  whether  of  poverty  or  ignorance, 
but  what  we  can  match  it.  Leaving  out 
the  negro,  we  have  over  ninety  per  cent 
Anglo-Saxon  in  the  South.  Here  we  find 
a  strange  lot  of  paradoxes,  —  the  most 
American,  the  most  ignorant,  the  most 
religious,  the  most  superstitious,  and  the 
most  lawless.  Take  the  lowest  class  of 
Crackers,  and  we  have  the  whole  of  the 
above  combined,  with  millions  of  moun- 
tain whites  to  match.  Yet  in  this  same 
South  land  are  the  most  gentlemanly,  and 
the  most  lady-like,  and  the  most  hospit- 
able people  in  the  country.  The  Cracker 
classes  are  descendants  of  the  English, 
but  what  kind  of  English  ?  The  offscour- 


236      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

ings  of  prison  and  dockyards,  sent  over 
to  work  on  the  plantations  before  slave 
labor  was  introduced. 

The  mountain  whites  are  the  descen- 
dants of  the  Scotch-Irish.  As  many 
people  seem  to  think  this  means  a  Scotch 
parent  on  one  side  and  an  Irish  upon  the 
other,  it  may  be  well  to  state  that  the 
Scotch-Irish  are  the  descendants  of  Scotch 
people  who  immigrated  to  Ireland.  But 
it  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
mountain  whites  are  the  descendants  of 
Scotch-Irish  of  two  centuries  ago,  a  very 
different  people  from  the  Scotch-Irish  of 
to-day.  Here  in  the  mountains  we  find 
some  three  millions,  often  without  schools, 
and  waiting  sometimes  for  years  for  a 
funeral  sermon  after  the  person  has  been 
buried.  Towns  can  be  found  over  seventy 
years  old  organized  with  a  court-house 
and  no  church. 

"  Yes,"  they  say,  "  the  Methodists 
started  one  some  years  ago ;  but  -  the 
Baptists  threw  the  timber  into  the  Cum- 
berland, and  sence  then  we  ain't  had 
no  church." 


THE  DANGEROUS  NATIVE   CLASSES.      237 

Here  one  of  our  minute-men  had  two 
horses  shot  under  him,  and  another  mis- 
sionary was  nearly  killed. 

Here  you  may  find  families  of  twenty 
and  more,  living  in  a  wretchedly  con- 
structed house,  on  bacon  and  corn-meal, 
hoe-cakes,  and  dodgers.  I  started  once 
to  stay  over  night  in  one  of  these  houses. 
As  we  came  near  to  the  place,  I  found 
that  my  host  was  a  school-teacher.  He 
had  taught  twenty-two  schools.  He  meant 
by  this  that  he  had  taught  that  many 
years.  The  kitchen  was  as  black  as  smoke 
could  make  it ;  the  butter  was  stringy, 
caused  by  the  cows  eating  cotton-seed ; 
and  my  seat  a  plank  worn  smooth  by 
use,  with  legs  which  stuck  up  through 
it,  which  would  have  been  better  had 
they  been  worn  more.  I  suppose  in  some 
way  I  involuntarily  showed  my  feelings ; 
for  the  woman  noticed  it,  and  said,  "  Yer 
oughter  put  up  with  one  night  what  we 
uns  have  ter  all  the  time." 

I  said  ''That's  the  trouble;  I  could 
when  I  got  used  to  it." 


238      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

The  room  I  slept  in  had  a  hole  in  the 
end  that  you  could  drive  a  span  of  horses 
through.  It  had  been  left  for  a  chimney. 
As  I  found  out  that  the  day  before  a 
rattlesnake  had  come  into  the  house,  and 
the  good  woman  had  to  defend  herself 
with  the  fire-poker,  I  did  not  sleep  so 
well  as  I  might.  The  possibility  of  a 
rattler  in  the  dark,  and  no  poker  handy, 
filled  me  with  uneasy  thoughts ;  but  as 
people  get  up  with  the  sun,  the  time 
passed,  and  I  was  glad  to  get  back  to 
civilized  life. 

I  noticed  that  the  cotton  was  ridged 
up  with  concave  rows  of  earth,  which  was 
covered  with  rank  weeds.  This  was  done 
to  keep  the  water  from  running  off  too 
quickly.  I  asked  whether  sage  would  not 
hold  the  ridges  as  good  as  weeds.  "  Oh, 
yes!  "  they  said,  and  it  brought  a  dollar 
a  pound  ;  but  they  had  never  thought 
of  that. 

Some  of  the  States  do  not  have  seventy 
school-days  in  the  year  ;  and  the  whole 
South  to-day  has  not  as  many  public 


THE  DANGEROUS  NATIVE   CLASSES.      239 

libraries  as  the  State  of  Massachusetts. 
A  man  needs  perfect  health  to  enjoy  some 
of  the  pastoral  work  which  he  must  do 
if  he  intends  making  a  success  among  the 
mountain  whites.  One  thing  should  never 
be  forgotten.  The  poor  whites  of  the 
mountains  were  loyal  to  the  Union,  and 
out  from  this  type  came  the  greatest 
American  we  have  had,  Abraham  Lincoln. 

Here,  then,  is  plenty  of  material  to  work 
on,  —  families  big  enough  to  start  a  small 
church,  and  who  do  not  send  to  England 
for  pug-dogs  for  lack  of  progeny.  Here 
is  the  rich  fields,  and  here  must  the  race 
be  lifted  before  the  millions  of  blacks 
can  have  a  chance.  Education  must  be 
pushed ;  and  then*  will  come  a  period  of 
scepticism,  for  this  people  are  fifty  years 
behind  the  times. 

Several  people  were  sitting  on  a  large 
veranda ;  and  one  man,  a  preacher  lately 
from  Texas,  was  telling  us  of  his  visit. 
Among  other  things  he  spoke  of  the 
cyclone-pits,  and  said,  "  Seems  to  me, 
brother,  a  man  can't  have  much  faith  in 


240      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

God  who  would  go  into  a  pit.  I  would 
not ;  would  you  ?  " 

"No,"  replied  mine  host.  "-Men  seem 
to  me  to  be  losing  faith.  I  once  raised 
a  woman  up  by  prayer  that  three  doctors 
had  given  up.  Aunt  Sally,  have  ye  any 
of  that  liver  invigorator  ?  I  kind  of  feel 
as  if  I  needed  some."  » 

Here  was  a  man  who  had  prayed  a 
woman  out  o.f  the  jaws  of  death,  calling 
for  liver  medicine.  None  of  them  seemed 
to  see  the  incongruity  of  it.  One  good 
old  deacon  that  I  knew  horrified  his 
pastor,  who  was  a  strong  temperance 
man,  by  furnishing  the  communion  with 
rye  whiskey.  The  old  man  meant  all 
right ;  but  he  had  neglected  to  replenish 
the  wine,  and  thought  something  of  a 
spirituous  nature  was  needed,  and  so 
brought  the  whiskey. 

It  is  a  fact  worth  noting,  that  we  have 
to-day,  in  the  year  1895,  millions  of  men 
living  in  conditions  as  primitive  as  those 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  while  in  the 
same  land  we  are  building  houses  which 


THE  DANGEROUS  NATIVE   CLASSES.      24 1 

are  lighted  and  heated  with  electricity; 
that  some  men  worship  in  houses  built 
of  logs,  without  glass  windows,  and  others 
worship  in  buildings  that  cost  millions  ; 
that  in  the  former  case  men  have  lived 
in  this  way  for  over  two  hundred  years, 
and  the  latter  less  than  fifty  since  the 
Indian's  tepee  was  the  only  dwelling  in 
sight ;  that  to-day  may  be  seen  the  prairie 
schooner  drawn  by  horses,  oxen,  or  mules, 
and  in  one  case  a  horse,  a  cow,  and  a 
mule,  the  little  shanty  on  wheels,  the  man 
sitting  in  the  doorway  driving,  and  his 
wife  cooking  the  dinner.  But  so  it  is. 
We  have  all  the  varieties  of  habitation, 
from  the  dugout  of  the  prairie  to  the  half- 
million  summer  cottage  at  Bar  Harbor ; 
and  from  a  single  Indian  pony,  we  have 
all  kinds  of  locomotion,  up  to  the  vesti- 
buled  palace  on  wheels. 

That  I  may  not  seem  to  be  over  stat- 
ing the  condition  of  the  mountain  whites, 
and  the  dangers  among  our  own  people, 
I  close  with  a  quotation  from  Dr.  Smart's 
Saratoga  address :  — 


242      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

"  Let  me  tell  you  of  just  one  experiment  of  let- 
ting a  people  alone,  and  its  result.  Shall  we  trust 
that  American  institutions  and  American  ideas, 
that  the  press  and  schools,  will  ultimately  American- 
ize them  ?  In  the  eastern  part  of  Kentucky,  in 
the  western  part  of  North  Carolina  and  West  Vir- 
ginia, there  is  a  section  of  country  about  the  size 
of  New  Hampshire  and  New  York,  —  one  of  the 
darkest  spots  on  the  map  of  the  South.  The 
people  living  there  have  been  there  for  over  a 
hundred  years,  and  are  of  Scotch-Irish  extraction. 
Whole  counties  can  be  found  in  which  there  is 
not  a  single  wagon-road.  Most  of  the  houses  are 
of  one  story,  without  a  window,  or  only  a  small 
one  ;  and  the  door  has  to  be  kept  open  to  let  in  the 
light.  I  have  it  from  good  authority  that  when  the 
first  schoolmistress  went  there  to  teach,  she  stipu- 
lated that  she  should  have  a  room  with  a  window  in 
it,  and  a  lock  to  the  door.  Very  few  of  the  people 
can  read  or  write.  They  have  no  newspapers,  no 
modern  appliances  for  agriculture,  no  connection 
with  the  world  outside  and  around  them.  This 
is  the  land  of  the  '  moonshiner.'  They  love  whis- 
key, and  so  they  manufacture  it.  The  pistol  and 
bowie-knife  are  judge  and  sheriff.  Bloodshed  is 
common,  and  barbarism  a  normal  state  of  society. 
These  men  were  not  slaveholders  in  the  times  be- 
fore the  war.  They  were  as  loyal  to  the  Union  as 
any  others  who  fought  for  the  old  flag,  and  they 
served  in  the  Union  army  when  they  got  a  chance. 


THE  DANGEROUS  NATIVE    CLASSES.      243 

When  Bishop  Smith  in  a  large  and  influential  meet- 
ing spoke  of  them,  he  touched  the  Southern  and 
Kentucky  pride,  especially  when  he  pointed  out 
what  a  moral  and  spiritual  blot  they  were  upon 
the  South.  Now,  why  are  they  there  a  hundred 
years  behind  us  in  every  respect  ?  Why  are  they 
sunk  so  low  ?  Simply  because  they  have  been  let 
alone.  They  are  just  as  much  separated  from  this 
land,  without  any  share  in  its  marvellous  progress, 
as  if  a  Chinese  wall  had  been  built  around  them. 
They  have  been  let  alone ;  and  American  institu- 
tions, American  schools,  and  the  American  press, 
have  flowed  around  them  and  beyond  them 
without  effect." 


244       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

» 

XXV. 

CHRISTIAN    WORK    IN    THE    LUMBER-TOWN. 

UNTIL  a  few  years  ago  I  knew  little 
or  nothing  of  mill-towns  or  lumber-camps. 
I  had  seen  a  saw-mill  that  cut  its  thou- 
sand feet  a  day  when  running,  and  it 
was  generally  connected  with  some  farm 
through  which  ran  a  stream.  It  was  a 
very  innocent  affair.  But  in  1889  I  saw 
for  the  first  time  the  great  forests  of 
pine,  and  became  acquainted  with  part 
of  the  immense  army  of  lumbermen. 
Michigan  alone  had  at  that  time  some 
forty  thousand ;  Wisconsin  has  as  many  ; 
Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Louisiana  are  now 
engaged  in  a .  vast  work ;  and  when  we 
add  the  great  States  of  Oregon  and 
Washington,  with  their  almost  illimitable 
forests,  we  feel  that  we  are  speaking 
within  bounds  when  we  say  an  immense 
army. 


WORK  IN  THE   LUMBER-TOWN.          245 

The  one  great  difficulty  of  the  problem 
is  the  transitory  character  of  the  work  — 
like  Count  Rumford's  stoves,  if  they  could 
only  have  been  patented  and  money  made 
out  of  them,  every  house  would  use  them ; 
so  if  the  lumber  village  had  come  to 
stay,  many  a  church  would  have  gone  in 
and  built.  But  more  th£n  once  a  man 
in  authority  has  said,  "  Oh,  I  have  looked 
that  field  over,  and  it  won't  amount  to 
much."  No  one  who  has  not  had  ex- 
perience in  the  field  can  form  any  ade- 
quate idea  of  its  vastness  or  its  crying 
needs.  The  one  great  trouble  of  the 
whole  question  is  the  massing  of  so  many 
men  away  from  the  softening  influence 
of  wife  and  mother.  It  is  unnatural  ;  and 
nature's  laws,  as  sacred  as  the  Decalogue, 
are  broken  in  unnatural  crimes,  and  sins 
unknown  to  the  common  run  of  men. 

The  lumber  business  may  be  divided 
into  three  distinct  classes  of  workers,  — 
the  mill-men,  the  camp-men,  and  the 
river-men.  The  last  are  the  smallest 
company,  but  the  hardest  to  reach.  They 


246      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

flit  from  stream  to  river,  from  the  river 
to  the  lake,  from  scenes  of  sylvan  beauty 
to  the  low  groggery —  and  worse.  Their 
temporary  home  is  often  made  of  black- 
ened logs  papered  with  Police  Gazettes, 
which  come  in  vast  numbers,  and  form 
the  largest  part  of  their  not  very  select 
reading.  Books*  of  the  Zola  type,  but 
without  their  literary  excellence,  are 
legion.  Good  books  and  good  literature 
would  be  a  boon  in  these  camps. 

To  give  you  an  idea  of  the  rapid  march 
of  the  lumber-camp,  come  with  me  into 
the  primeval  forest.  It  is  a  winter  day. 
The  snow  is  deep,  and  the  lordly  pines 
are  dressed  like  brides  in  purest  white ; 
one  would  think,  to  look  at  their  pen- 
dent branches,  that  Praxiteles  and  all 
his  pupils  had  worked  for  a  century  in 
sculpturing  these  lovely  forms.  Not  a 
sound  is  heard  save  our  sleigh-bells,  or 
some  chattering  squirrel  that  leaps  lightly 
over  the  powdery  snow ;  a  gun  fired 
would  bring  down  a  harmless  avalanche. 
It  is  a  sight  of  unsurpassed  beauty  in 


WORK  AY  THE  LUMBER -TOWN.          247 

nature's  privacy ;  but  alas,  how  soon  the 
change ! 

An  army  of  brawny  men  invade  the 
lovely  scene.  Rude  houses  of  logs  are 
quickly  erected  ;  and  men  with  axe  and 
saw  soon  change  the  view,  and  with 
peavey  and  cant-hook  the  logs  are  loaded 
and  off  for  the  rollway.  Inside  the  largest 
house  are  bunks,  one  above  another ;  two 
huge  stoves  with  great  iron  cylinders,  one 
at  each  end,  give  warmth ;  while  in  pic- 
turesque confusion,  socks  and  red  macki- 
naws  and  shirts  hang  steaming  by  the 
dozens.  There  is  a  cockloft,  where  the 
men  write  their  letters,  and  rude  benches, 
where  they  sit  and  smoke  and  tell  yarns 
till  bedtime.  In  a  few  weeks  at  the  far- 
thest the  grand  old  forest  is  a  wreck ;  a 
few  scrubby  oaks  or  dwindling  beech-trees 
are  all  that  are  left.  The  buildings  rot 

o 

down,  the  roofs  tumble  in,  and  a  few 
camp-stragglers  trying  to  get  a  living  out 
of  the  stumpy  ground  are  all  that  are 
left ;  and  solitude  reigns  supreme. 

On  stormy  days  hundreds  of  the  men 


248       MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

go  into  the  nearest  village,  and  sin  revels 
in  excess.  In  many  a  small  town,  mothers 
call  their  little  ones  in  from  the  streets, 
which  are  soon  full  of  men  drunken  and 
swearing,  ready  for  fight  or  worse.  At 
such  times  they  hold  the  village  in  a 
reign  of  terror,  and  often  commit  crimes 
of  a  shocking  nature,  and  no  officer  dares 
molest  them.  A  stranger  coming  at  such 
a  time  would  need  to  conduct  himself  very 
discreetly  or  he  would  get  into  trouble.  A 
volume  might  be  filled  with  the  outrageous 
things  done  in  these  small  lumber-towns. 
Ireland  is  not  the  only  place  that  suffers 
from  absentee  landlords. 

The  condition  of  the  children  is  pitiable, 
brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  drunk- 
enness and  debauchery  ;  swearing  as  natu- 
ral as  breathing  ;  houses  packed  so  closely 
that  you  can  reach  across  from  one  window 
to  another.  The  refuse  is  often  emptied 
between  the  houses  ;  diseases  of  all  kinds 
flourish,  and  death  is  ever  busy.  Eight 
or  ten  nationalities  are  often  found  in 
these  towns,  —  men  who  cannot  spell 


WORK  IN  THE  LUMBER -TOWN.          249 

their  names,  and  men  who  went  to  St. 
Paul's  and  admired  Canon  Liddon,  or 
New  York  men  that  went  to  Beecher's 
church. 

Here  a  house  which  cost  less  than  a 
hundred  dollars,  and  inside  of  it  an  organ 
costing  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  dol- 
lars, and  a  forty-dollar  encyclopaedia.  The 
next  house  is  divided  by  stalls  like  a 
stable,  with  bed  in  one,  stove  in  another, 
and  kitchen  in  the  third.  With  a  popu- 
lation as  mixed  as  this,  and  in  constant 
flux,  what,  you  ask,  can  the  church  do  ? 
I  answer,  much,  very  much,  if  you  can 
only  get  a  church  there;  but  when  the 
church  which  gives  much  more  than  any 
other  gives  but  a  quarter  of  a  cent  per 
day  per  member,  is  it  any  wonder  that  hun- 
dreds of  churchless  lumber-towns  call  in 
vain  for  help  from  the  sanctuary?  Some 
small  villages  can  be  found  where  every 
family  is  living  in  unlawful  relations. 

Now,  remember  this,  the  lumberman  is 
made  of  the  same  clay  that  we  are,  and  it 
is  his  environment  that  brings  to  the  front 


250      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

the  worst  that  is  in  him.  He  is  reached 
by  practical  Christianity  as  easily  as  any 
other  man.  The  shame  and  reproach  be- 
long to  us  for  neglecting  him,  and  there 
is  no  other  way  that  we  so  dishonor  him 
whom  we  call  Master  as  to  say  his  com- 
mands are  not  practicable.  Is  it  asking 
too  much  from  the  rich  men  who  get  their 
money  by  the  toil  of  these  men,  that  out 
of  their  millions  they  should  spend  thou- 
sands for  the  moral  welfare  of  those  who 
make  them  rich  ?  And  yet  too  often  they 
do  not  even  know  their  own  foremen,  and 
in  many  cases  have  never  visited  the 
property  they  own. 

I  once  asked  a  rich  lumber-man  for 
a  subscription  for  missions,  saying  I  was 
sorry  he  was  not  at  the  church  when  I 
took  up  my  collection.  "  Jinks !  I  am 
glad  I  was  not  there,"  he  said  ;  "I  gave 
away  ten  dollars  Saturday  night." 

Now,  this  man  had  been  cutting  off 
from  his  land  for  thirty  years,  and  had 
just  sold  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars' 
worth  of  it,  and  still  had  land  left.  But 


WORK  IN  THE  LUMBER -TOWN. 

on  the  other  hand,  be  it  known  that 
the  men  in  these  villages  who  make  no 
profession  of  religion  actually  give  dollar 
for  dollar  with  the  Christian  church- 
members  to  sustain  the  frontier  churches. 
Saloon-keepers,  and  often  Roman  Cath- 
olics, help  to  support  the  missionary 
church. 

The  mission  churches  of  the  lumber 
regions  are  like  springs  in  the  desert, 
but  for  which  the  traveller  would  die  on 
his  way;  and  thousands  of  church-mem- 
bers scattered  from  ocean  to  ocean  were 
born  of  the  Spirit  in  some  one  of  these 
little  churches  that  did  brave  work  in  a 
transient  town. 

To  do  work  in  these  places  aright,  one 
must  drop  all  denominational  nonsense, 
—  be  as  ready  to  pray  and  work  with 
the  dying  Roman  Catholic  as  with  a 
member  of  his  own  church,  and  do  as 
I  did,  —  lend  the  church  building  to  the 
priest,  because  disease  in  the  town  would 
not  permit  of  using  the  private  houses 
at  the  time,  and  so  help  to  fill  up  the 


252      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

gap  between  us  and  the  old  mother 
that  nursed  us  a  thousand  years. 

In  every  new  town,  in  every  camp, 
should  be  a  standing"  notice,  "  No  cranks 
need  apply." 

Here  is  a  brawny  man  who  does  not 
like  the  church.  He  hates  the  name  of 
preacher,  and  threatens  that  he  had  bet- 
ter not  call  at  his  house.  Scarlet  fever 
takes  his  children  down.  The  despised 
preacher,  armed  with  a  basket  of  good 
things,  raps  at  the  door.  Pat  opens  it. 
"  Good-morning,  Pat.  I  heard  your  little 
ones  were  sick,  and  my  wife  thought  your 
wife  would  have  her  hands  full,  and  she 
has  sent  a  few  little  things  —  not  much, 
but  they  will  help  a  little,  I  hope." 

The  tears  are  in  Pat's  eyes.  "  Come 
in,  Elder,  if  you  are  not  afraid,  for  we 
have  scarlet  fever  here." 

"  That  is  the  very  reason  I  came,  my 
boy ; "  and  Pat  is  won.  The  very  man 
that  swore  the  hardest  because  the  elder 
was  near,  now  says,  "Don't  swear,  boys; 
there's  the  elder." 


WORK  IN   THE   LUMBER-TOWN.          2$$ 

Yes ;  and  when  men  have  heard  that 
the  new  preacher  has  helped  in  the  house 
stricken  with  small-pox  or  typhoid,  he  has 
the  freedom  of  the  village,  or  the  camp, 
and  is  respected.  And  so  the  village 
missionary  does  some  good  in  the  mill- 
town.  But  what  is  one  man  among  so 
many?  See  this  little  place  with  less  than 
five  hundred  population.  Two  thousand 
men  come  there  for  their  mail,  and  the 
average  distance  to  the  next  church  is 
over  twenty  miles ;  and  one  man  is  totally 
inadequate  to  the  great  work  before  him. 

These  villages  and  camps  ought  to  have 
good  libraries,  a  hall  well  lighted,  inno- 
cent amusements,  lectures,  and  entertain- 
ments, and  in  addition  to  this,  an  army 
of  men  carrying  good  books  and  visiting 
all  the  camps;  and  there  is  nothing  to 
hinder  but  the  lack  of  money,  and  the 
lack  of  will  to  use  it  in  those  who  have 
abundance.  I  lately  passed  through  a 
lumber-town  of  seven  thousand  inhabi- 
tants. Four  or  five  millionnaires  lived 
there.  One  had  put  up  an  $80,000  train- 


254       MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

ing-school,  another  a  memorial  building 
costing  $160,000.  This  is  the  other 
extreme.  But  up  to  date  the  lumber- 
regions  have  been  shamefully  neglected, 
and  thousands  of  boys  and  girls  are 
growing  up  to  drift,  to  our  great  cities 
and  form  the  dangerous  classes,  fitted  for 
it  by  their  training.  It  is  better  to  clear 
the  water-sheds  than  to  buy  filters,  and 
the  cheapest  policeman  of  the  city  is  the 
missionary  in  the  waste  places  of  our 
land. 


TWO  KINDS  OF  FRONTIER.  2$$ 

XXVI. 

TWO    KINDS    OF    FRONTIER. 

SOME  years  ago  it  is  said  that  a  man 
lost  his  pig,  and  in  searching  for  it  he 
found  it  by  hearing  its  squealing.  The 
pig  had  fallen  in  a  hole;  and  in  getting 
it  out,  the  man  saw  the  rich  copper 
ore  which  led  to  the  opening  of  the 
Calumet  and  Hecla  mines,  and  more  re- 
cently the  Tamarack.  More  ore  per  ton 
goes  into  the  lake  from  the  washing  than 
comes  out  of  most  mines.  So  rich  is 
this  ore  that  very  few  fine  mineral  speci- 
mens are  found  in  the  mines.  Millions 
of  money  have  been  expended  in  devel- 
oping them,  and  millions  more  have  come 
out  of  them. 

With  such  richness  one  would  expect 
to  find  the  usual  deviltry  that  abounds  in 
mining  regions  ;  but  such  is  not  the  case. 
In  the  early  days,  the  mines  were  worked 


256      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

on  Sunday  in  the  Keweenaw  region  ;  but 
through  the  resolute  stand  of  two  Scotch- 
men, who  would  not  work  on  Sunday,  the 
work  was  stopped  on  Saturday  night  at 
twelve  o'clock,  and  resumed  again  Monday 
at  twelve  A.M.  And  this  was  found  to  be 
a  benefit  all  round,  as  it  generally  is. 
I  knew  of  a  salt-well  where  the  man 
thought  it  must  be  kept  going  all  the  time ; 
but  one  Sunday  he  let  it  rest,  and  found 
that,  instead  of  coming  up  in  little  spits,  it 
accumulated,  so  that,  as  he  said,  it  came 
"ker-plump,  ker-phimp." 

When  the  little  church  was  first  started 
in  Calumet,  the  projectors  of  it  were  asked 
how  much  money  they  would  want  from 
the  society  to  help  them.  The  answer 
was,  a  check  for  two  hundred  dollars  for 
home  missions.  Knowing  this,  I  was  not 
surprised  to  find  good  churches,  good 
schools,  good  society,  a  good  hotel,  and 
as  good  morals  as  you  can  find  any- 
where. Not  a  drop  of  liquor  is  sold  in 
Calumet.  This  shows  what  may  be  done 
by  starting  right ;  and  there  is  no  occa- 


TWO  KINDS  OF  FRONTIER. 

sion  for  a  mining-camp  to  be  any  worse 
except  through  criminal  neglect  of  the 
owners. 

We  pass  on  to  the  new  mines  farther 
west,  and  what  do  we  find?  Saloons 
packed  twenty  in  a  block,  dance-houses 
with  the  most  degrading  attachments, 
scores  of  young  lives  sacrificed  to  man's 
lust,  the  streets  dangerous  after  dark, 
and  not  pleasant  to  be  on  at  any  time. 
The  local  newspaper  thus  heralded  a 
dog- fight  at  the  theatre,  "  As  both  dogs 
are  in  good  condition,  it  will  prove  one 
of  the  most  interesting  fights  ever  seen 
on  this  range." 

Here  is  the  copy  of  an  advertisement : 
"At  the  Alhambra  Theatre.  Prize-fight, 
thirty  rounds  or  more.  Prize,  $200,00. 
Don't  mistake  this  for  a  hippodrome. 
Men  in  fine  condition.  Plucky.  Usual 
price." 

Here  is  another:  "Saturday,  Sunday, 
and  Monday,  balloon  ascension.  A  lady 
from  the  East  will  go  up  hanging  by  her 
toes.  At  a  great  height  she  will  drop 


258       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

deeds  of  lots,  the  lucky  possessor  only  to 
write  his  or  her  name  to  own  the  lot. 
Persons  coming  from  a  distance,  and  buy- 
ing lots,  will  have  railroad  money  refunded 
Men  leaving  work,  and  buying,  their  wages 
paid.  Everybody  come  and  have  a  good 
time.  Remember  the  date's  Saturday, 
Sunday,  and  Monday." 

Here  pandemonium  reigned.  What  a 
place  to  raise  a  family !  Thousands  of 
little  children  were  growing  up  under  these 
awful  conditions.  I  have  gone  up  the 
lake  more  than  once  when  innocent  young 
girls  were  on  the  boat,  expecting  to  find 
places  at  the  hotel,  only  to  meet  with 
temptation  and  ruin ;  some  committing 
suicide,  some  becoming  more  reckless 
than  the  brutes  that  duped  them. 

The  harbor  could  be  reached  only  by 
daylight,  and  with  vessels  of  light  draft ; 
and  no  sooner  were  they  unloaded  than 
they  steamed  off  again,  not  to  return  for 
a  week.  Thus  there  was  no  way  for 
these  unfortunate  girls  to  get  back  if  they 
wished,  for  it  was  a  dense  forest  for  thirty 


TWO  KINDS   OF  FRONTIER.  2  59 

miles  to  the  nearest  railway  point ,  in  the 
meanwhile,  worse  than  death  came  to 
those  who  fell  into  the  clutches  of  such 
fiends  in  human  shape. 

One  man,  the  chief  owner  there,  threat- 
ened the  bold  rascals  ;  but  they  said  they 
would  build  their  house  upon  a  raft  and 
defy  him.  He  said,  "  I  will  cut  you 
loose."  They  snapped  their  fingers  at 
him,  burnt  his  hotel,  and  shot  him.  Did 
this  go  on  in  the  dark  ?  No ;  the  Chi- 
cago and  Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul's  news- 
papers wrote  it  up.  I  spoke  of  it  until 
warned  I  must  not  tell  such  awful  things  : 
it  would  be  too  shocking. 

Into  such  awful  places  our  minute- 
man  goes,  and  takes  his  family  too.  It 
is  hard  work  at  first,  but  little  by  little 
sin  must  give  way  before  righteousness. 
It  is  strange  that  Christian  men  and 
women  can  draw  incomes  from  these 
mines,  and  feel  no  duty  towards  the 
poor  men  who  work  for  them.  I  met 
one  such  man  upon  the  steamer  coming 
from  Europe.  He  had  been  over  twice 


260      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER 

that  season.  He  had  made  his  thou- 
sands, and  was  going  back  with  his 
family  to  travel  in  Egypt,  and  leave  his 
children  with  their  nurses  at  Cairo. 

He  admitted  everything  I  told  him 
about  the  condition  of  things  on  his  own 
property  ;  and  in  answer  as  to  whether 
he  would  help,  said,  "  No ;  it's  none  of 
my  funeral."  How  any  man  could  walk 
those  streets,  and  see  fair  young  girls 
drunk  at  nine  A.M.,  and  in  company 
with  some  of  the  worst  characters  that 
ever  disgraced  humanity,  and  not  feel  his 
obligations  to  his  Lord  and  fellow-man, 
is  more  than  I  can  understand. 

The  awful  cheapness  of  human  life, 
the  grim  jokes  upon  the  most  solemn 
things,  could  only  be  matched  in  the 
French  Revolution.  I  saw  in  one  store, 
devoted  to  furniture  and  picture-frames, 
a  deep  frame  with  a  glass  front,  and  in- 
side a  knotted  rope,  and  written  under- 
neath, "  Deputy-sheriff's  necktie,  worn  by 

for  murdering  Mollie "  on  such 

a  date.  This  was  for  the  sheriff's  parlor. 


TWO   KINDS   OF  FRONTIER.  26 1 

Hard  times  have  made  a  great  change 
since  I  walked  those  streets.  The  roar 
of  traffic  has  given  place  to  the  howl 
of  hungry  wolves  that  have  prowled 
among  the  deserted  shanties  in  midday 
in.  search  of  food;  and  the  State  has 
had  to  supply  food  and  clothing  to  the 
poor,  while  my  man,  who  had  made  his 
thousands,  was  studying  the  cuneiform 
inscription,  in  Egypt.  It  ought  to  make 
him  think,  when  he  sees  the  mummies 
of  dead  kings  being  shipped  to  England 
to  raise  turnips,  that  some  day  he  will 
have  a  funeral  all  his  own. 


262      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 


XXVII. 

BREAKING    NEW    GROUND. 

"  This  is  the  forest  primeval? 

A  GRAND  sight  is  the  forest  primeval 
when  the  birds  fill  all  its  arches  with  song, 
or  we  sweep  through  them  to  the  music 
of  sleigh-bells.  A  pleasant  sight  is  the 
farmer,  surrounded  by  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren, with  well-kept  farm,  ample  barns, 
and  well-fed  stock.  But  what  wild  desola- 
tion once  reigned  where  now  these  fine 
farms  are  seen  !  The  great  trees  stretched 
on  for  hundreds  of  miles.  The  hardy  set- 
tler came  with  axe  and  saw  and  slow-paced 
oxen,  cleared  a  little  space,  and  built  a 
log  hut.  For  a  little  time  all  goes  well; 
then  thistles,  burdocks,  mulleins,  and 
briers  come  to  pester  him  and  increase  his 
labors.  Between  the  blackened  log-heaps 
fire-weeds  spring  up.  The  man  and  his 
wife  grow  old  fast.  Ague  shakes  their 


BREAKING  NEW  GROUND.  263 

confidence  as  well  as  their  bodies.  Schools 
are  few,  the  roads  mere  trails. 

Then  a  village  starts.  First  a  country 
store ;  then  a  saloon  begins  to  make  its 
pestilential  influence  felt.  The  dance 
thrives.  The  children  grow  up  strong, 
rough,  ignorant.  The  justice  of  the  peace 
marries  them.  No  minister  comes.  The 
hearts  once  tender  and  homesick,  in  the 
forest  grow  cold  and  hardened.  At  fu- 
nerals perhaps  a  godly  woman  offers 
prayer.  Papers  are  few  and  poor.  Books 
are  very  scarce.  In  winter  the  man  is  far 
off,  with  his  older  boys,  in  the  lumber- 
camps,  earning  money  to  buy  seed,  and 
supplies  for  present  wants.  The  woman 
pines  in  her  lonely  home.  The  man  breaks 
down  prematurely.  Too  many  of  these 
pioneers  end  their  days  in  insane  asy- 
lums. It  is  the  third  generation  which 
lives  comfortably  on  pleasant  farms,  or 
strangers  reap  that  whereon  they  bestowed 
no  labor. 

This  may  seem  too  dark  a  picture.  Song 
and  story  have  gilded  the  pioneer  life  so 


264      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

that  its  realities  are  myths  to  most  people. 
It  is  better  when  a  colony  starts  with 
money,  horses,  books,  etc.  ;  but  it  is  hard 
enough  then.  Few  keep  their  piety.  I 
visited  a  community  where  nearly  every 
family  were  church-members  in  their  early 
homes;  but,  after  twenty  years,  only  one 
family  had  kept  up  the  fire  upon  the  altar. 
It  is  hard  to  break  up  such  fallows.  How 
different  had  a  minister  gone  with  them, 
and  a  church  been  built ! 

The  missionary  has  different  material 
altogether  to  work  on  in  the  natural  born 
pioneer.  I  visited  one  family  which  had 
a  black  bear,  two  hounds,  some  pet  squir- 
rels, cats,  and  a  canary ;  over  the  fire- 
place hung  rifles,  deer-horns,  and  other 
trophies  of  the  chase.  The  man  was  get- 
ting ready  to  move.  At  first  his  nearest 
neighbors  were  bears  and  deer ;  but  now 
a  railway  had  come,  also  schools  and 
churches.  He  said,  "  Tain't  like  it  was 
at  fust ;  times  is  hard  ;  have  to  go  miles 
for  a  deer ;  folks  is  getting  stuck  up,  wear- 
ing biled  shirts,  getting  spring  beds  and 


BREAKING  NEW  GROUND.  265 

rockers,  and  then  ye  can't  do  nothin'  but 
some  one  is  making  a  fuss.  I  shall  cl'ar 
out  of  this  !  " 

And  he  did,  burying  himself  and  family 
in  the  depths  of  the  woods.  The  home- 
steader often  takes  these  deserted  places, 
after  paying  a  mere  trifle  for  the  improve- 
ments. 

Homesteaders  are  numerous,  generally 
very  poor,  and  are  apt  to  have  large  fami- 
lies. One  man,  who  had  eight  hundred 
dollars,  was  looked  upon  as  a  Rothschild. 
Many  families  had  to  leave  part  of  their 
furniture  on  the  dock,  as  a  pledge  of  pay- 
ment for  their  passage  or  freight-bill.  But, 
homesteaders  or  colonists,  all  must  work 
hard,  be  strong,  live  on  plain  fare,  and 
dress  in  coarse  clothing.  The  missionary 
among  these  people  must  do  the  same. 
A  good  brother  told  me  that,  on  a  mem- 
orable cold  New  Year's  Day,  he  went  into 
the  woods  to  cut  stove-wood,  taking  for  his 
dinner  a  large  piece  of  dry  bread.  By 
noon  it  was  frozen  solid ;  but,  said  he, 
"  I  had  good  teeth,  and  it  tasted  sweet." 


266       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

Another  lived  without  bread  for  some 
time,  being  thankful  for  corn-meal.  Those 
who  live  far  from  the  railways  are  often 
brought  to  great  straits,  through  stress  of 
weather  and  the  wretched  roads.  Lit- 
tle can  be  raised  at  first ;  the  work  must 
be  done  in  a  primitive  way. 

As  it  is  with  the  farmer,  so  it  is  with 
the  missionary.  The  breaking  of  new 
ground  is  hard  work.  Everything  at  first 
seems  delightful.  The  people  are  glad, 
"  seeing  they  have  a  Levite  for  their 
priest."  They  promise  well.  The  minis- 
ter starts  in  with  a  brave  heart,  and  com- 
mences to  underbrush  and  cut  down  the 
giant  sins  that  have  grown  on  such  fat 
soil.  But  as  they  come  down,  he,  too, 
finds  the  thistles  and  mulleins  ;  jealousies, 
sectarian  and  otherwise,  come  in  and 
hinder  him,  and  it  is  a  long,  weary  way 
to  the  well-filled  church,  the  thriving 
Sunday-school,  and  the  snug  parsonage. 

Often  he  fares  like  the  early  farmer. 
The  pioneer  preacher  is  seldom  seen  in 
the  pretty  church,  but  a  man  of  a  later 


BREAKING   NEW  GROUND.  267 

generation.  The  old  man  is  alive  yet, 
and  perhaps  his  good  wife  ;  but  they  are 
plain  folks,  and  belong  to  another  day. 
Sometimes  they  look  back  with  regret  to 
the  very  hardships  they  endured,  now 
transfigured  and  glorified  through  the 
mists  of  years.  Should  the  reader  think 
the  picture  too  dark,  here  are  two  con- 
densed illustrations  from  Dr.  Leach's 
"  History  of  Grand  Traverse  Region." 
Remember,  this  was  only  a  few  years 
ago,  and  where  to-day  seventy  thousand 
people  dwell,  on  improved  farms,  and  in 
villages  alive  with  business,  having  all 
the  comforts,  and  not  a  few  of  the  luxu- 
ries, of  civilized  life. 

In  those  early  days,  Mr.  Limblin,  find- 
ing he  had  but  one  bushel  and  a  half  of 
corn  left,  and  one  dollar  and  a  half  in 
money,  prevailed  on  a  Mr.  Clark  to  take 
both  corn  and  money  to  Traverse  City, 
thirty  miles  away,  and  get  groceries  with 
the  money,  and  have  the  corn  ground, 
Mr.  Clark  to  have  half  for  the  work.  One 
ox  was  all  the  beast  of  burden  they  had. 


268      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

Mr.  Clark  started  with  the  corn  on  the 
back  of  the  ox ;  about  half-way  he  ex- 
changed for  a  pony  and  sled  for  the  rest 
of  the  road,  leaving  the  ox  with  the 
Indians  till  his  return.  On  his  way  back, 
a  fierce  snowstorm  hid  the  shores  of  the 
bay  from  view.  Presently  he  came  to  a 
wide  crack  in  the  ice ;  his  pony,  being 
urged,  made  a  spring,  but  only  got  his 
fore  hoofs  on  the  other  side.  Mr.  Clark 
sprang  over  and  grasped  the  pony's  ears, 
but,  as  he  pulled,  his  feet  slipped,  and 
down  he  came.  His  cries  brought  the 
Indians,  who  rescued  him  and  the  pony. 
Exhausted,  he  crawled  back  to  their  camp. 
But,  alas !  the  corn-meal  and  groceries 
were  at  the  bottom  of  the  bay.  A  sad 
scene  it  was  to  see  his  poor  wife's  tears 
on  his  arrival  home. 

Rev.  Peter  Daugherty,  now  of  Wis- 
consin, was  the  first  missionary  in  these 
parts.  He  once  missed  his  way;  and 
night  coming  on,  he  saw  that  he  must 
sleep  in  the  woods.  The  air  was  chill. 
Not  daring  to  build  a  fire  for  fear  of  the 


BREAKING  NEW  GROUND.  269 

damage  it  might  do  to  the  dry  woods, 
he  cast  about  for  a  shelter.  Spying  two 
headless  barrels  on  the  beach,  with  much 
trouble  he  crawled  into  them,  drawing 
them  as  close  together  as  he  could,  and 
so  passed  the  night.  He  got  up  very 
early  and  finished  his  journey.  But  do 
we  have  such  places  yet  ?  and  does  the 
missionary  still  have  to  expose  himself? 
Yes,  friends,  there  are  scores  of  such 
places  in  every  frontier  State  and  Ter- 
ritory; and  strong  men  are  needed  more 
than  ever  to  break  up  new  ground,  and 
cause  the  desert  and  solitary  places  to 
be  glad  and  blossom  as  the  rose.  Send 
us  such  men ! 


2/0      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

XXVIII. 

SOWING   THE    SEED. 

THE  land  is  bound  to  grow  its  crop. 
The  more  the  land  has  been  enriched, 
the  greater  will  be  that  crop,  of  useful 
grain  or  rank  weeds.  And  the  only  way 
to  keep  the  weeds  from  gaining  the  vic- 
tory is  by  sowing  good  seed  and  pulling 
the  weeds.  A  friend  in  Detroit  once 
called  my  attention  to  the  luxuriant  weeds 
in  a  fenced  lot  we  were  walking  by.  In 
the  vacant  lot  close  by,  the  weeds  were 
stunted.  In  the  fenced  lot  a  market  gar- 
dener once  lived.  He  had  enriched  the 
soil. 

Our  country  is  to  have  a  rank  growth 
of  something.  Rich  in  the  blood  of 
many  nationalities,  with  freedom  well- 
nigh  to  license,  what  will  the  harvest 
be  if  left  without  spiritual  husbandry  ? 
Dr.  Mulhall's  "  Dictionary  of  Statistics  " 


.       SOWING    THE  SEED.  2/1 

tells  us  how  the  crop  looks  now.  The 
ratio  of  murders  to  each  million  inhabi- 
tants has  stood  as  follows  in  the  coun- 
tries named  :  England,  711;  Ireland,  883  ; 
France,  796  ;  Germany,  837  ;  and  the 
United  States,  2,460.  Only  Italy  and 
Spain  exceed  us.  Do  we  wonder  why 
the  foreigner  is  worse  here  than  at 
home  ?  The  answer  is  easy.  He  has 
left  the  restraints  of  a  watchful  govern- 
ment; our  liberty  is  for  him  license.  On 
the  frontier  he  is  exposed  to  the  worst 
influences,  and  for  years  has  no  religious 
instruction  nor  even  example.  Is  it 
strange  that  death  reaps  such  a  harvest  ? 
The  sowers  go  forth  to  sow.  In  due 
time  that  seed  ripens  to  the  harvest. 

The  Police  Gazette  is  sowing  dragon's 
teeth  most  diligently.  The  log  shanties 
of  the  lumbermen  are  often  papered  with 
them.  Nice  primers  these  for  "  young 
America  "  !  Sober  Maine  sends  streams 
of  polluted  literature  out  here,  with  cheap 
chromo  attachments,  and  the  Sunday- 
school  lesson  in  them  for  an  opiate. 


2/2      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

The  infidel  lecturer  is  sowing  his  seed  on 
the  fruitful  soil  of  runaway  guilt.  The 
callow  scientist  is  dropping  seed  long 
since  dropped  in  another  way  by  real 
scientists.  The  whole  country  is  sown 
with  newspapers  of  all  grades,  and  the 
crop  is  coming  up.  What  shall  the  har- 
vest be  ? 

"  Be  not  deceived,  whatsoever  a  nation 
soweth,  that  shall  it  also  reap." 

In  a  very  large  number  of  new  set- 
tlements all  the  above  agencies  are  in 
active  operation  before  the  missionary 
arrives ;  and,  oh,  what  a  field  he  finds  ! 
The  farmer  on  the  new  farm  cannot  use 
the  drill  and  improved  implements  for 
the  uneven  places  and  stumps,  but 
must  needs  sow  by  hand,  and  sometimes 
between  the  log  piles,  a  little  here  and 
a  little  there,  and  then,  between  times, 
spend  his  strength  underbrushing. 

So  the  missionary  starts  without  a 
church  building,  choir,  organ,  or  even 
a  membership,  his  pulpit  a  box  in  a 
vacant  store,  or  in  a  schoolhouse  or  rail- 


SOWING    THE  SEED.  2/3 

way  depot,  or  some  rude  log  house  of 
the  settler ;  his  audience  is  gathered  from 
the  four  corners  of  the  earth  —  represen- 
tatives of  a  dozen  sects,  backsliders  in 
abundance,  and  those  who  have  run  away 
from  the  light  of  civilized  life.  Many 
amoncr  the  latter  have  broken  their  mar- 

o 

riage  vows,  and  are  now  living  in  unlaw- 
ful wedlock. 

I  remember  once  preaching  on  this 
evil  to  an  audience  of  less  than  twenty, 
and  was  surprised  at  the  close  of  the 
meeting  to  hear  a  woman  say,  "  Did  you 

know  you  gave  Mrs. an  awful  crack 

on  the  knuckles  to-day  ?  " 

I  said,  "  No  !  " 

"Well,  ye  did,  ye  know." 

Mentioning  the  circumstance  with  sur- 
prise to  another,  I  received  for  an  answer, 
"  Well,  she  needn't  say  nothin' ;  she's  in 
the  same  boat  herself !  " 

Depressed  in  spirits,  I  told  my  troubles 
to  a  good  lady  who  I  knew  was  "  one 
of  the  salt  of  the  earth,"  and  noticing  a 
smile  come  over  her  face,  I  asked  her 


2/4      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

what  she  was  smiling  at.  She  replied, 
"  The  third  was  as  bad  as  the  other 
two !  " 

Just  here  is  one  of  the  greatest  hin- 
drances the  missionary  has  to  contend 
with.  I  am  not  sure  but  it  rivals  the 
saloon.  One  missionary  I  visited  told  me 
that  in  one  little  hamlet,  on  his  field,  there 
was  not  a  single  family  living  in  lawful 
wedlock.  It  is  next  to  impossible  to  do 
anything  with  the  parents  in  such  cases. 
But  there  is  one  bright  side  to  this  dark 
picture.  Almost  without  exception,  they 
like  to  have  their  children  attend  the 
Sabbath-school.  Here  is  prolific  soil  in 
which  to  sow  good  seed,  and  we  cannot 
commence  too  soon. 

We  are  living  in  rushing  times.  I 
have  just  read  in  a  paper  that  one  town 
in  Ontonagon  County,  one  year  and  a 
half  old,  has  three  thousand  inhabitants, 
forty-five  saloons,  twelve  hotels,  two 
papers,  forty-eight  stores,  two  opera 
houses,  and  an  electric  plant !  With  vil- 
lages springing  up  in  every  county,  and 


SOWING    THE  SEED.  2?$ 

the  immense  onflowing  tide  from  foreign 
shores,  the  lone  missionary  on  the  frontier 
ofttimes  would  despair,  but  for  the  prom- 
ise of  the  Master,  the  miracles  of  the  past, 
and  the  joy  of  hope's  bright  harvest  in  the 
future.  And  so,  "going  forth  weeping, 
bearing  precious  seed,"  he  sows  beside  all 
waters,  with  full  expectations  that  "  He 
shall  come  again  rejoicing,  bringing  His 
sheaves  with  Him." 

That  the  reader  may  have  an  idea  of  the 
vastness  of  the  field,  and  the  distances 
between  the  workers,  I  will  jot  down  a 
few  facts.  In  1887  there  were  thirty 
Congregational  churches  in  the  three  con- 
ferences of  Grand  Traverse,  Cheboygan, 
and  Chippewa  and  Mackinac.  These  con- 
ferences had  an  average  width  of  sixty 
miles,  and  stretch  from  Sherman,  in  the 
south  of  Grand  Traverse  Conference,  for 
a  hundred  and  fifty-eight  miles,  as  the 
bird  flies,  to  Sugar  Island,  in  the  north 
of  Chippewa  and  Mackinac  Conference. 

No  one  can  say  we  were  crowded. 
My  nearest  neighbor  was  sixteen  miles 


2/6      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

away,  the  next  thirty,  and  the  next  forty; 
and,  unless  a  change  has  come  very  lately, 
this  is  the  only  self-supporting  church  in 
the  three  conferences  —  and  that  because 
it  was  settled  thirty  years  prior  to  many 
of  the  other  churches.  Ten  years  ago 
there  were  hundreds  of  miles  of  unbroken 
forests  where  to-day  are  crowded  sum- 
mer resorts  and  busy  villages,  filled  with 
representatives  of  the  most  diverse  nation- 
alities under  the  sun.  I  have  preached 
to  a  good-sized  audience  with  not  a  sin- 
gle person  in  it  that  was  born  in  the 
United  States.  And  the  cry  is,  Still  they 
come.  Now  send  on  your  harvesters  ! 


HARVEST  HOME:'  277 


XXIX. 


HARVEST    HOME." 


AFTER  all  the  hopes  and  fears  and  toil  of 
the  summer,  the  farmer's  most  beautiful 
sight  is  to  see  the  last  great  load  safe  in 
the  barn,  the  stock  fattening  on  the  rich, 
sweet  aftermath,  the  golden  fruit  in  the 
orchard,  and  the  big,  red,  harvest  moon 
smiling  over  all.  This  is  a  frequent  sight, 
despite  poor  crops  and  bad  weather.  The 
successful  farmer  does  not  rely  on  one, 
but  a  variety  of  crops.  Then,  if  the  sea- 
son is  bad  for  corn,  it  will  be  good  for 
oats  or  wheat.  Some  crop  will  repay 
his  labor. 

Here  is  a  hint  for  the  home  missionary 
who  goes  forth  to  sow  spiritual  seed.  If 
he  expects  to  get  a  crop  of  Congrega- 
tionalists,  he  will  often  lament  over  poor 
returns.  Often  the  missionary  finds  him- 
self in  a  miscellaneous  gathering,  like  that 


2/8      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

of  Pentecost  in  its  variety,  and  no  mere 
' 'ism"  will  crystallize  them.  One  is  of 
Paul,  another  of  Apollos  or  Cephas,  and 
he  must  "  determine  not  to  know  any- 
thing among  them  save  Christ  and  him 
crucified."  He  must  drop  minor  points, 
and  adopt  that  plan  on  which  all  can 
agree. 

Here  is  a  bit  of  experience.  In  a  com- 
munity of  seven  hundred  souls,  the  fol- 
lowing denominations  were  represented  : 
Baptists,  three  kinds ;  Presbyterians,  two 
kinds  ;  Methodists,  four  kinds  ;  Christians, 
"  Church  of  God,"  Episcopalians,  Roman 
Catholics,  Seventh-day  Adventists,  Luther- 
ans of  all  branches,  Quakers,  and  Con- 
gregationalists.  One  day  I  found  three 
married  women  making  ready  to  keep 
house  in  what  had  been  a  large  store,  the 
only  vacant  place  in  which  to  live;  their 
husbands  were  working  and  living  in 
camp.  I  said,  "  I  am  glad  to  see  you.  I 
suppose  you  are  all  Christians  ?  " 

To  my  surprise,  they  all  cheerfully  re- 
sponded, "  Yes." 


"HARVEST  HOME: 


279 


"  Well,  that  is  good  news,"  I  said. 
"  And  to  what  church  do  you  belong  ?  " 

"  Church  of  God,"  was  their  answer. 

"  Good  ;  so  do  I.  Have  you  brought 
your  letters  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  But  do  you  really  belong  to  the 
'  Church  of  God'?"  said  one.  "Well,  I 
am  glad  to  think  we  should  find  a  '  Church 
of  God  '  minister  way  up  here  !  " 

This  she  said  addressing  the  other 
women. 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  one,  "  he  means  that 
every  church  is  a  church  of  God !  " 

"  Oh  !  "  was  the  answer,  with  a  shade  of 
disappointment  on  her  face. 

"  Well,  well,"  I  said,  "  is  not  that  true  ?" 

"  Y-a-as  ;  but  it  is  not  like  ourn." 

"What  do  you  believe  different  from 
me  ?  "  . 

"  Well,  we  believe  in  feet-washing  for 
one  thing,  and  in  immersion." 

"  Oh,  well,  I  think  Christians  should 
wash  their  feet  too." 

"  Now,    Elder,    that   ain't   right    to    be 


28O      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

making  fun  of  Scripter ;  for  Christ  told 
his  disciples  to  wash  one  another's  feet, 
and  said,  '  Happy  are  ye  if  ye  do  these 
things.' " 

I  explained  what  I  thought  was  the 
meaning  of  the  lesson,  but  she  shook  her 
head. 

I  said,  "  Are  you  happy?" 
"  Not  very.     I  feel  lonesome  here." 
"  But  is  not  Christ  here  too  ?  " 
"  Oh,  yes ;   but  it  is  not  home." 
"  Well,  I  am  glad  you  belong  to  Christ, 
and  hope  you  will  unite  with  us  in  fight- 
ing the  common  foe.     Will  you  come    to 
church,  and  bring  the  children  to  our  Sab- 
bath-school ?" 

"  Well,  we  shall  do  that." 
As  I  was  leaving  one  of  them  said, 
"  There  is  a  new-comer  across  the  street. 
She  belongs  to  some  church  outside''  By 
"outside"  she  meant  the  old,  settled  parts. 
"  You  better  call  on  her." 

I  did  so,  and  said  that  I  was  the  home 
missionary.  I  asked  her  how  she  liked 
her  new  home  ? 


" HARVEST  HOME."  28 1 

"  Not  much.  It  is  a  dreadfully  wicked 
place." 

"  Yes,  that  is  true  ;  and  I  hope  you  will 
lend  a  hand  in  the  good  work.  You  are 
a  Christian,  I  believe  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  but  I  don't  belong  to  your 
church. " 

"What  church  are  you  now  a  member 
of?" 

"Well,  there  is  only  one  of  my  kind  in 
the  State  that  I  know  of." 

"You  must  feel  lonesome  at  times;  but 
in  what  do  you  differ  from  us  ?  " 

"Well,  we  believe  in  being  immersed 
three  times  in  succession,  face  downwards. 
I  intend  doing  what  I  can." 

After  giving  her  a  cordial  invitation  to 
attend  the  church,  I  left  the  good  woman, 
saying  I  hoped  I  could  depend  on  her 
being  at  church.  But,  alas !  trade  became 
so  brisk  that  the  good  sister  had  to  work 
Sundays.  She  felt  very  sorry,  she  said, 
but  it  did  seem  as  if  it  was  impossible  to 
live  a  Christian  life  in  such  a  wicked  place ; 
and  she  had  concluded  not  to  give  her 


282       MINUTE-MAN  ON    THE  FRONTIER. 

letter  to  the  church  until  she  could  get 
into  a  better  community,  where  she  would 
not  have  to  work  Sundays.  I  told  her 
I  was  surprised  that  one  who  had  been 
so  thoroughly  cleansed  should  have  fallen 
away  so  quickly. 

"  Yes ;  but  it  is  such  a  wicked  place." 

"  I  know ;  but  you  have  only  to  be  just 
a  small  Christian  here  to  pass  for  a  first- 
class  saint! " 

She  smiled  sadly,  and  said  she  guessed 
she  would  wait. 

A  man  that  must  have  a  "  New  England 
element"  to  work  in  will  feel  depressed 
in  such  a  field.  But  if,  like  Wesley,  his 
field  is  the  world,  or,  like  Paul,  he  can 
say  to  the  people,  "  called  to  be  saints," 
then  he  can  thrust  in  the  sickle  and 
begin  harvesting.  We  must  not  only  sow 
beside  all  waters,  but  reap  too.  Do  not 
harvest  the  weeds  and  the  darnel,  nor 
reject  the  barley  because  it  is  not  wheat. 
Often  in  the  new  settlements  there  are 
enough  Christians  to  form  the  nucleus  of 
one  church  ;  whereas,  if  we  wait  to  have  a 


"HARVEST  HOME."  283 

church   for  each   sect,  it  means  waste  of 
money  and  waste  of  men. 

In  one  small  town  of  less  than  three 
hundred  people,  where  there  were  many 
denominations  represented,  the  company 
that  owned  nearly  all  the  land  gave  a  lot 
and  the  lumber  for  a  church.  Most  of 
the  Christians  united,  and  a  minister  was 
secured.  Some,  however,  would  not  join 
with  their  brethren,  but  waited  on  the 
superintendent  to  get  a  lot  for  themselves. 
He  said,  "  Yes,  we  will  give  you  all  a  lot 
and  help  you  build.  Just  as  soon  as  this 
church  becomes  self-supporting  we  will 
give  the  next  strongest  a  lot,  and  so  on 
to  the  end." 

This  is  level-headed  Christian  business. 
If  we  want  to  reap  the  harvest,  we  must 
''receive  him  that  is  weak  in  the  faith." 
Hidden  away  in  trunks  are  hundreds  of 
church  letters  that  should  be  coaxed  out. 
Faithful  preaching,  teaching,  and  visiting, 
will  bring  a  glorious  "  Harvest  Home." 
A  goodly  sight  it  is  to  see,  under  one 
roof,  all  these  different  branches  of  the 


284      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

Lord's  army  worshipping1  the  same  Master, 
rejoicing  in  the  same  hope,  and  realizing 
in  a  small  degree  that  there  is  neither 
Jew  nor  Greek,  bond  nor  free,  male  nor 
female,  but  that  all  are  one  in  Christ 
Jesus. 


INJEANNY   KS1.   HEAVEN,  285 

XXX. 

INJEANNY   VS.    HEAVEN. 

THE  title  to  this  chapter  bears  about  the 
same  relation  to  its  contents  as  the  name 
of  one  sermon  does  to  the  other  twenty 
in  a  given  volume.  I  gave  it  this  title 
because  it  must  have  some  heading ; 
everything  has  a  heading.  Graves  have 
headstones. 

No  greater  variety  of  character  exists 
on  the  frontier  than  elsewhere,  but  pecu- 
liar cases  come  to  the  surface  oftener. 
Those  women  living  in  the  woods,  who  be- 
longed to  the  "  Church  of  God,"  are  good 
illustrations.  They  had  some  peculiar 
ideas  about  the  Scriptures,  but  it  was  much 
more  refreshing  to  the  missionary  to  find 
peculiar  views  than  none  at  all.  I  often 
introduced  myself  to  them  with  a  text  of 
Scripture,  and  tried  hard  to  induce  them 
to  move  into  the  next  village  for  their 


286      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

children's  sake.  It  was  a  much  better 
place  morally,  although  but  a  mile  distant. 
But  the  influence  of  an  organized  church, 
with  a  good  building  and  Sunday-school, 
made  a  greater  difference  than  the  distance 
would  seem  to  warrant.  One  day,  as  I 
was  passing  their  home,  I  shouted  out, 
"  Up,  get  you  out  of  this  place ;  for  the 
Lord  will  destroy  this  city !  "  The  next 
day  I  was  off  on  my  way  to  the  other  side 
of  the  State.  As  my  journey  well  illus- 
trates the  difficulties  of  travel  in  a  new 
country,  I  will  describe  it. 

At  my  first  change  of  cars,  I  found  that 
my  train  was  delayed  by  a  fire  along  the 
track,  so  that  I  could  not  make  my  next 
connection  with  a  cross-country  train. 
This  troubled  me,  as  it  was  Friday,  and 
the  young  minister  whom  I  was  about  to 
visit  was  doing  manual  work  on  his  church 
building,  and  would  probably  be  ill-pre- 
pared to  preach  himself.  I  telegraphed 
him,  and  was  just  turning  away  when  my 
eye  caught  sight  of  a  map,  and  I  noticed 
that  the  road  I  was  on  and  the  road  he 


INJEANNY   VS.   HEAVEN.  287 

was  on,  although  a  hundred  miles  apart 
where  I  was  then,  gradually  approached 
until  within  thirteen  miles  of  each  other, 
one  hundred  miles  north.  Remembering 
that  a  stage  crossed  at  this  point,  I  started 
on  the  late  train,  which,  like  a  human  be- 
ing, seldom  makes  up  for  lost  time,  and 
was  dropped  into  the  pitch  darkness  about 
eleven  P.M.  The  red  lights  of  the  train 
were  soon  lost  in  the  black  forest ;  I  felt 
like  Goldsmith's  last  man. 

Two  or  three  little  lights  twinkled  from 
some  log  cabins.  A  small  boy,  with  a 
dilapidated  mail-bag  and  a  dirty  lantern, 
stood  near  me.  I  asked  him  if  there  was 
a  hotel  in  town. 

He  said,  -Yep." 

Would  he  guide  me  to  it  ? 

"  Yep." 

I  next  inquired  whether  the  stage  made 
connections  with  the  train  on  the  other 
road. 

"Wai,  yes,  it  gineraley  does." 

"  Why,  does  it  not  to-morrow  ?  " 

"  Guess  not." 


288       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

"Why?" 

"  Cos'  of  the  ternado." 

"  Tornado  ?" 

"  Yes ;  didn't  ye  know  we  had  a 
ternado  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  Well,  we  did,  ye  know ;  tore  the  trees 
up  hullsale,  and  just  played  Ned.  Rain 
cum  down  like  suds." 

"  Well,  can  I  get  a  buggy  or  wagon  ?  " 

"Guess  not;  both  out  in  the  woods; 
can't  git  home." 

I  felt  sick  at  hearing  this  ;  for  how  to 
get  across  with  two  grips  filled  with  books, 
theological  books  too,  troubled  me.  I 
slept  little.  My  room  was  bare  ;  the  rain 
pattering  on  the  roof,  the  mosquitoes 
inside,  and  my  own  thoughts,  routed 
me  out  early  Saturday  morning.  I  was 
pleased  to  find  that  the  man  had  re- 
turned with  the  wagon,  and  after  much 
persuasion,  I  engaged  him  for  five  dol- 
lars to  take  me  across. 

We  started  off  with  an  axe.  The  old 
settlers  laughed  at  our  attempt,  but  we 


INJEANNY   VS.    HEAVEN.  289 

were  young.  Over  the  fallen  trees  we 
went  bumping  along ;  but,  alas,  we  tried 
too  big  a  maple,  and  out  came  the  reach- 
pole  and  left  us  balanced  on  the  tree. 
After  a  tiring  walk  through  the  "  shin- 
tangles  " — that  is,  ground  hemlock  —  we 
reached  the  road,  and  mounted  bareback. 
We  met  some  commercial  travellers  cut- 
ting their  way  through,  with  a  settler's  help, 
passed  a  horse  and  buggy  (minus  a  driver), 
with  a  bottle  of  whiskey  in  the  bottom. 
We  then  had  the  good  fortune  to  borrow 
a  single  wagon  of  a  minister,  who  lived 
near  on  a  farm.  Our  horses  had  to  walk 
in  the  water  by  the  edge  of  the  lake,  and 
the  leeches  fastened  on  them  by  the 
dozen.  Finally  we  met  the  stage,  and 
knew  our  way  was  clear.  We  were 
drenched  with  the  rain,  but  it  was  clear- 
ing, and  so  we  cheered  up. 

I  asked  the  stage-driver  whether  I  could 
catch  the  train. 

He  said,  "Well,  if  ye  drive,  ye  can." 
The    emphasis    he    put    into    the    drive 
made  us  whip   up.     Presently  the  village 


MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

could  be  seen,  a  half-mile  away.  The 
engine  was  on  the  turntable.  How  fast  it 
went  around  !  I  was  getting  nervous.  I 
asked  the  man  to  get  my  grips  out,  while 
I  got  my  ticket  ;  and  rushing  into  the 
office,  I  snapped  out,  "Ticket  for !  " 

The  man  turned  his  head  with  a  jerk, 
and  stared  at  me  so  intently  that  I  thought 
something  was  wrong.  So  I  said,  "  What 
time  does  the  train  start  ?  " 

"  In  about  an  hour." 

You  could  have  knocked  me  over  with 
a  feather.  I  felt  like  Sir  Francis  Drake, 
when  his  vessel  seemed  to  be  going  over 
in  the  Thames.  "What!  have  I  sailed 
the  ocean,"  said  he,  "  to  be  drowned  in  a 
ditch  ? "  So,  I  thought,  "  Have  I  come 
a  hundred  miles  out  of  my  way,  to  miss 
the  train  ?  " 

I  boarded  the  cars,  cleaned  my  valises, 
and  found  the  color  running  from  my 
book-covers.  My  boots  were  like  brown 
paper,  so  sodden  were  they.  I  dried  my- 
self by  the  stove  ;  but  my  troubles  were  not 
over.  The  train-boy  called  out  the  station 


INJEANNY   VS.   HEAVEN.  2QI 

at  the  water-tank.  The  rain  was  pouring 
down  ;  I  was  in  for  it  again  ;  so  I  walked 
down  between  the  freight  cars,  went  to 
the  hotel  and  dried  myself  again,  and,  after 
dancing  around  the  room  on  one  foot  to  get 
my  boots  on,  I  started  off  to  find  my  man. 
He  was  out  of  town  !  Expected  home 
with  a  funeral  soon.  I  was  foolish  enough 
to  make  myself  known  as  soon  as  he  got 
off  the  cars,  and  he  coaxed  me  into  tak- 
ing charge  of  the  funeral.  Then  for  the 
third  time  I  was  soaked,  as  we  stood  in 
the  new  cemetery,  while  a  hymn  of  six 
verses  was  rendered.  But  what  flattened 
me  worse  than  all  was  that  the  young 
man  had  not  received  my  second  tele- 
gram, which  I  sent  to  relieve  his  sup- 
posed excited  feelings,  and  had  not  been 
troubled  in  the  least,  but  was  going  to 
make  Fred.  Robertson  ("  who  being  dead 
yet  speaketh  ")  do  duty  for  him.  Tired 
out,  I  flung  myself  on  a  bed,  and  slept 
in  spite  of  —  well  never  mind  what.  I 
had  to  change  quarters  next  night,  for 
I  was  not  so  sleepy. 


2Q2      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

I  received  a  letter  from  the  student 

who  had  taken  my  charge,  saying,  " 

is  burnt  to  the  ground,  and  all  north  of 
the  railway."  In  an  instant  there  flashed 
on  my  mind  the  words  of  the  woman  : 
"  Up,  get  you  out,"  etc.  The  same  words 
came  home  to  the  women  as  they  saw 
their  homes  going  up  in  smoke. 

"What  did  the  elder  say?"  said  they 
to  one  another. 

The  excitement  of  the  fire  brought  on 
brain  fever  in  the  case  of  the  youngest 
child. 

On  my  return,  while  trying  to  comfort 
the  little  one  (who  we  thought  was  dy- 
ing), and  telling  her  about  heaven,  she 
cried  out  in  her  feebleness,  "  I  don't 
want  to  go  to  heaven !  I  want  to  go 
to  Injeanny." 

And,  sure  enough,  she  got  well,  and 
did  go  to  "  Injeanny." 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA,        293 

XXXI 

THE    LATEST    FRONTIER OKLAHOMA. 

COLLIER,  in  his  "  Great  Events  of 
History,"  tells  of  a  million  warriors  who, 
leaving  their  wives  and  children,  crossed 
the  Danube,  and  swore  allegiance  to 
Rome.  Since  that  time  a  great  many 
immigrations  have  taken  place,  but  none 
on  so  large  a  scale.  But,  large  or  small, 
the  settlements  of  the  Indian  Territory, 
now  called  Oklahoma,  are  the  most 
unique. 

It  would  have  been  hard  to  have  de- 
vised a  worse  way  to  open  a  new  country. 
Thousands  of  people  —  strong,  weak,  the 
poor  settler,  the  speculator,  the  gambler 
—  were  all  here,  man  and  wife,  and  spin- 
ster on  her  own  responsibility.  All 
waited  for  weeks  on  the  border-land.  At 
last  the  time  came,  and  the  gun  was 
fired,  and  in  confusion  wild  as  a  Co- 


294      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

manche  raid,  the  great  rush  was  made. 
Many  sections  being  claimed  by  two  and 
three  parties,  the  occasion  had  its  comic 
side,  amid  more  that  was  tragic.  Thou- 
sands went  in  on  cattle-cars,  and  as 
many  more  filled  common  coaches  inside 
and  out,  and  clung  to  the  cow-catcher  of 
the  engine.  In  places  wire  fences  were 
on  either  side  of  the  railway  ;  and  men 
in  trying  to  get  through  them  in  a  hurry, 
often  reached  their  land  minus  a  large 
part  of  their  clothing. 

In  one  case  a  portly  woman,  taking 
the  tortoise  plan  of  slow  and  steady, 
reached  the  best  section,  while  the  men 
still  hung  in  the  fence  like  victims  of 
a  butcher-bird.  It  is  said  of  one  young 
woman,  who  made  the  run  on  horse- 
back, that  reaching  a  town-site,  her  horse 
stumbled,  and  she  was  thrown  violently 
to  the  ground  and  stunned.  A  passing 
man  jumped  off  his  horse,  and  sprinkled 
her  face  with  water  from  his  canteen  ; 
and  as  she  revived,  the  first  thing  she 
said  was,  "  This  is  my  lot." 


LATEST  FRONTIER — OKLAHOMA.         2Q$ 

"  No,  you  don't,"  said  the  man.  But 
to  settle  it  they  went  to  law,  and  the 
court  decided  in  favor  of  the  woman,  as 
she  struck  the  ground  first. 

Among  much  that  was  brutal  and  bar- 
barous, some  cases  of  chivalry  were  no- 
ticed. In  one  case  a  young  woman  was 
caught  in  a  wire  fence,  and  two  young 
men  went  back,  helped  her  out,  and  al- 
lowed her  to  take  her  choice  of  a  section. 
One  man,  in  his  eagerness,  found  himself 
many  miles  from  water.  As  he  was  driv- 
ing his  stake,  he  noticed  that  his  horse 
was  dying ;  and  realizing  his  awful  situa- 
tion, being  nearly  exhausted  with  thirst, 
he  cut  his  horse's  throat,  drank  the  blood, 
and  saved  his  own  life. 

The  work  done  in  six  years  is  simply 
marvellous.  Imagine  the  prairie  described 
by  Loomis  as  the  place  where  you  could 
see  day  after  to-morrow  coming  up  over 
the  horizon  ;  at  times  covered  with  flowers 
fair  as  the  garden  of  the  Lord,  or  covered 
with  snow,  and  nothing  to  break  the  fury 
of  the  wind.  Seventy-five  thousand  In- 


296      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

dians  the  only  permanent  residents  in  the 
morning  ;  at  night  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  whites  —  villages,  towns,  and  cities 
started,  in  some  of  them  a  mayor  chosen, 
a  board  of  aldermen  elected,  and  the 
staked-out  streets  under  police  control. 
The  inhabitants  were  under  tents  for  a 
few  weeks,  while  sickness  of  all  kinds  at- 
tacked them.  There  were  rattlesnakes  of 
two  varieties,  tarantulas,  two  kinds  of  scor- 
pions, —  one,  the  most  dangerous,  a  kind 
of  lizard,  which  also  stings  with  its  tail, 
and  with  often  deadly  effect,  —  and  centi- 
pedes that  grow  to  six  inches  in  length. 
One  of  the  latter  was  inside  a  shirt 
which  came  home  from  the  laundry,  and 
planted  his  many  feet  on  the  breast  of 
one  of  our  minute-men,  and  caused  it 
to  swell  so  fearfully  that  he  thought  at 
one  time  he  should  die.  He  recovered, 
but  still  at  times  feels  the  effect  of  the 
wounds,  which  are  as  numerous  as  the 
feet.  The  pain  caused  is  intense,  and 
the  parts  wounded  slough  off. 

Now    imagine    all    this ;    and    then    six 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.         297 

years  after  you  visit  this  land,  and  find 
cities  of  ten  thousand  inhabitants,  banks 
with  polished  granite  pillars,  —  polished 
with  three  per  cent  per  month  interest, 
—  great  blocks,  huge  elevators,  and  fine 
hotels.  And  nowhere,  even  in  Paris,  will 
you  find  more  style  than  among  the  well- 
to-do.  And  on  the  same  streets  where  I 
saw  all  this,  I  also  saw  men  picking  ker- 
nels of  corn  out  of  an  old  cellar  close  by 
a  second-hand  store,  where  already  the 
poor  had  given  up  and  sold  their  furni- 
ture to  get  home. 

I  looked  out  of  my  hotel  window  one 
morning  in  "  Old  Oklahoma,"  and  saw  a 
lady  walking  past  dressed  in  a  lavender 
suit,  a  white  hat  with  great  ostrich  feath- 
ers on  it,  by  her  side  a  gentleman  as 
well  groomed  as  any  New  York  swell,  an 
English  greyhound  ambled  by  their  side, 
while  in  the  rear  were  rough  men  with 
the  ugly  stiff  hats  usually  worn  by  your 
frontier  rough.  Storekeepers  were  going 
to  work  in  their  shirt-sleeves.  This  was 
in  a  town  of  two  thousand  inhabitants, 


298      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE    FRONTIER. 

where  there  were  four  banks,  four  news- 
papers,  eleven  churches,  and  only  three 
saloons. 

While  I  was  there  a  most  brutal  mur- 
der took  place,  —  a  woman  shot  her 
step-daughter,  killing  her  instantly.  The 
husband,  the  girl's  father,  swept  the 
blood  from  the  sidewalk,  and  went  down 
to  the  jail  that  night  and  stayed  with  the 
woman,  while  a  fiddler  was  sent  clown  to 
cheer  her.  This  man  was  her  fifth  hus- 
band. 

In  the  two  weeks  I  was  in  that  vicin- 
ity seven  persons  were  killed.  Three 
men  had  shot  down  some  train-robbers, 
and  after  they  were  dead  had  filled  their 
bodies  with  bullets.  This  so  incensed 
the  friends  of  the  dead  men  that  a  num- 
ber of  them  went  to  the  house  where 
the  men  had  fortified  themselves.  When 
they  saw  how  large  a  force  was  against 
them,  they  surrendered,  their  wives  in  the 
meanwhile  begging  the  men  who  had 
come  not  to  molest  their  husbands.  But 
the  women  were  pushed  rudely  aside,  and 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA,         299 

the  men  were  carried  to  the  hills  and 
lynched.  One  murderer  cost  the  Territory 
over  fifteen  thousand  dollars.  Banks 
have  loaded  pistols  behind  the  wire  win- 
dows, where  they  can  be  reached  at  a 
moment's  notice. 

Still,  lawlessness  is  not  the  rule ;  and 
it  has  never  been  as  bad  as  one  city  was 
farther  north,  where  men  were  held  up 
on  the  main  street  in  broad  daylight. 
Such  facts  may  just  as  well  be  known, 
because  there  is  a  better  time  coming", 
and  these  things  are  but  transitory. 

In  the  old  settled  parts,  peach  orchards 
are  already  bearing ;  and  if  there  is  a 
moderate  rainfall,  and  the  people  can  get 
three  good  crops  out  of  five,  such  is  the 
richness  of  the  soil,  the  people  will  be 
rich.  But  to  me  the  western  part  of  the 
Territory  seems  like  an  experiment  as 
yet.  There  are  many  places  in  the  same 
latitude  farther  north  utterly  deserted ; 
and  empty  court-houses,  schools,  and 
churches  stand  on  the  dry  prairie  as  lone- 
some as  Persepolis  without  her  grandeur. 


300      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

But  now  let  us  go  into  "  The  Strip/' 
("  The  Strip  "  is  the  Cherokee  Strip,  the 
last  but  one  opened  ;  the  Kickapoo  being 
opened  this  May.)  It  has  been  settled 
about  eighteen  months.  It  is  May,  1895. 
We  leave  the  train,  and  start  across  the 
prairie  in  a  buggy  with  splendid  horses 
that  can  be  bought  for  less  than  forty 
dollars  each.  We  pass  beautiful  little  po- 
nies that  you  can  buy  for  ten  to  twenty 
dollars.  On  either  side  we  pass  large 
herds  of  cattle  and  many  horses.  Few 
houses  are  in  sight,  as  most  of  them  are 
very  small  and  hardly  distinguishable  from 
the  ground,  while  some  are  under  ground. 
Here  and  there  a  little  log  house,  made 
from  the  "black  jacks"  that  border  the 
stream,  which  is  often  a  dry  ditch.  The 
rivers,  with  banks  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
apart  at  flood  can  be  stepped  over  to- 
day. 

Fifty  miles  of  riding  bring  us  to  a 
county  town.  All  the  county  towns  in 
"The  Strip"  were  located  by  the  Gov- 
ernment, and  have  large  squares,  or  rather 


LA  TES  T  FRONTIER  —  O  KLA  HO  MA .        301 

oblongs,  in  which  the  county  buildings 
stand.  It  is  the  day  before  the  Indians 
are  paid.  Here  we  find  every  one  busy. 
Streets  are  being  graded,  and  a  fine  court- 
house in  process  of  erection.  Stores  are 
doing  an  immense  business,  one  reaching 
over  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a 
year ;  another,  larger  still,  being  built. 
By  their  sides  will  be  a  peanut-stand,  a 
sod  store,  another  partly  of  wood  and 
partly  of  canvas,  and  every  conceivable 
kind  of  building  for  living  in  or  trading. 
And  here  is  a  house  with  every  modern 
convenience,  up  to  a  set  of  china  for  after- 
noon teas,  and  a  club  already  formed  for 
progressive  euchre. 

The  Indian  is  not  a  terror  to  the  set- 
tlers, as  in  early  days  ;  but  he  exasperates 
him,  stalking  by  to  get  his  money  from 
the  Government.  He  spends  it  like  a 
child,  on  anything  and  everything  to 
which  he  takes  a  notion.  He  lives  on 
canned  goods,  and  feasts  for  a  time,  then 
fasts  until  the  Great  Fathers  send  him 
more  money.  On  the  reservation,  gam- 


302      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

biers  fleece  him ;  but  he  does  not  seem 
to  care,  for  he  has  a  regular  income  and 
all  the  independence  of  a  pauper. 

It  seemed  very  strange  to  look  out  of 
the  car  window,  and  see  the  tepees  of  the 
Indians,  and  on  the  other  side  of  the  car 
a  lady  in  riding-habit  with  a  gentleman 
escort  —  a  pair  who  would  have  been  in 
their  place  in  Rotten  Row. 

Now  we  must  turn  westward  for  a  hun- 
dred miles,  and  in  all  the  long  ride  pass 
but  one  wheatfield  that  will  pay  for  cut- 
ting ;  and  that  depends  on  rain,  and  must 
be  cut  with  a  header.  Dire  distress  al- 
ready stares  the  settler  in  the  face  ;  and 
even  men,  made  desperate  by  hunger 
in  Old  Oklahoma,  are  sending  their  peti- 
tions to  Guthrie  for  food.  There  are  hun- 
dreds of  families  who  have  nothing  but 
flour  and  milk,  and  some  who  have  neither. 
When  a  cry  goes  up  for  help,  it  is  soon 
followed  by  another,  saying  things  are 
not  so  bad.  This  latter  cry  comes  from 
those  who  hold  property,  and  who  would 
rather  the  people  starve  than  that  property 
should  decrease. 


LA  TES T  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.         303 

I  saw  men  who  had  cut  wood,  and 
hauled  it  sixteen  miles,  then  split  it,  and 
carried  it  twelve  miles  to  market,  and  after 
their  three  days'  work  the  two  men  had 
a  load  for  themselves  and  one  dollar  and  a 
quarter  left.  And  one  man  said,  "  Mine 
is  a  case  of  '  root  hog  or  die,' "  and  so  got 
fifty  cents  for  his  load  of  wood  he  had 
brought  fourteen  miles ;  while  another 
man  returned  with  his,  after  vainly  offering 
it  for  forty  cents.  In  one  town  I  saw  a 
horse,  —  a  poor  one,  it  is  true, — but  the 
man  could  not  get  another  bid  after  it 
had  reached  one  dollar  and  a  half. 

Of  course  there  are  thousands  who  are 
better  off;  but  in  the  case  of  very  many 
they  were  at  the  very  last  degree  of  pov- 
erty when  they  went  in.  Many  of  our 
minute-men  preached  the  first  Sunday. 
They  were  among  the  men  who  sat  on 
the  cow-catcher  of  the  engine,  and  made 
the  run  for  a  church-lot  and  to  win  souls. 
They  preached  that  first  Sunday  in  a  dust- 
storm  so  bad  that  you  could  scarcely  see 
the  color  of  your  clothes.  To  those  who 


304       MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

never  saw  one,  these  dust-storms  are  past 
belief.  Even  when  the  doors  and  win- 
dows are  closed,  the  room  seems  as  if  it 
were  in  a  fog ;  for  the  fine  particles  of  dust 
defy  doors  and  windows.  And  should  a 
window  be  left  open,  you  can  literally  use 
a  shovel  to  get  the  dust  off  the  beds. 

You  may  be  riding  along,  as  I  was,  the 
hot  wind  coming  in  puffs,  the  swifts  glid- 
ing over  the  prairie  by  your  side,  the  heat 
rising  visibly  on  the  horizon,  when  in  a 
flash,  a  dust-storm  from  the  north  came 
tearing  along,  until  you  could  not  see  your 
pony's  head  at  times,  drifts  six  inches  deep 
on  the  wheat,  and  your  teeth  chattering 
with  the  cold  at  one  P.M.,  when  at  eleven 
A.M.  you  were  nearly  exhausted  with  the 
heat. 

Strange  when  you  ask  people  whether 
it  is  not  extremely  hot  in  the  Middle 
West,  they  say,  "  Yes;  but  we  always  have 
cool  nights."  And,  as  a  rule,  that  is  so  ; 
but  now  as  I  write,  July  9,  1895,  comes 
the  news  of  intense  heat, —  thermometer  a 
hundred  and  nine  in  the  shade,  and  ninety- 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.        305 

eight  at  midnight,  followed  by  a  storm 
that  shot  pebbles  into  the  very  brickwork 
of  the  houses. 

Every  man  who  can,  has  a  cyclone  cel- 
lar. Some  are  fitted  up  so  that  you  could 
keep  house  in  them.  In  one  town  where 
I  went  to  speak,  the  meeting  was  aban- 
doned on  account  of  a  storm  which  was 
but  moderate ;  but  such  is  the  fear  of 
the  twister  that  nearly  all  the  people  were 
in  their  pits. 

In  the  Baptist  church,  where  they  had 
a  full  house  the  night  before,  I  found 
one  woman  and  two  men ;  and  they 
were  blowing  out  the  lights.  The  tele- 
grams kept  coming,  telling  of  a  storm 
shaking  buildings,  and  travelling  forty 
miles  an  hour ;  but  it  was  dissipated 
before  it  reached  me,  and  I  escaped. 
Yet  I  found  a  man  who  had  lived  over 
a  quarter  of  a  century  in  the  West,  and 
had  never  seen  one. 

It  is  a  big  country.  A  friend  of  mine 
in  England  wrote  me  that  they  feared  for 
me  as  they  read  of  our  fearful  cyclones. 


306      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

I  was  living  near  Boston,  Mass.  I  wrote 
back,  saying  I  felt  bad  for  them  in  Lon- 
don when  the  Danube  overflowed.  I  had 
to  go  over  and  explain  it  before  they  saw 
my  joke. 

The  cyclone,  however,  is  no  joke. 
Nevertheless,  it  performs  some  queer 
antics.  One  cyclone  struck  a  house,  and 
left  nothing  but  the  floor  and  a  tin  cus- 
pidore.  The  latter  stood  by  a  stove 
which  weighed  several  hundredweight, 
and  which  was  smashed  to  atoms. 

In  another  house  a  heavy  table  was 
torn  to  pieces,  while  the  piano-cover  in 
the  same  room  was  left  on  the  piano. 
In  one  house  all  had  gone  into  the  cel- 
lar, when  they  remembered  the  sleeping 
baby.  A  young  girl  sprang  in,  and  got 
the  baby;  and  just  as  she  stepped  off, 
the  house  went,  and  she  floated  into  the 
cellar  like  a  piece  of  thistle-down.  A 
school-teacher  was  leaving  school,  when 
she  was  thrown  to  the  ground,  and  every 
bit  of  clothing  was  stripped  from  her, 
leaving  her  without  a  scratch. 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.         307 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  escape 
was  a  few  years  ago  in  Kansas  City. 
When  a  young  school-teacher  reached 
home,  her  mother  said,  "  Why  did  you  not 
bring  your  young  brother  ?  "  She  hast- 
ened back ;  and  as  she  reached  the  room 
where  her  brother  was,  she  grasped  him 
around  the  waist,  and  jumped  out  of  the 
window  just  as  the  building  was  struck. 
She  was  carried  two  blocks,  and  dropped 
without  injury  to  either  of  them.  These 
things  are  hard  to  believe,  but  no  one  will 
be  lost  who  does  not  believe  them. 

But  to  return  to  our  journey.  We  had 
three  churches  to  dedicate  in  three  days, 
two  on  one  day.  And  here  let  me  say, 
a  church  could  be  organized  every  day  in 
the  year,  and  not  trespass  on  any  one's 
work.  We  could  see  the  little  building 
loom  up  on  the  horizon,  appearing  twice 
its  size,  as  things  do  on  the  prairie  with 
nothing  to  contrast  them  with,  for  the 
houses  were  almost  invisible.  The  place 
was  crowded,  so  that  the  wagon-seats  were 
brought  in  ;' and  a  very  affecting  sight  it 


308      MINUTE-MAN.  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

was  to  see  the  communion-wine  brought 
in  a  ketchup  bottle.  The  people  were 
good,  but  very  poor,  although  nearly  all 
owned  horses,  for  in  that  country  this  is 
no  sign  of  wealth. 

After  a  few  hours'  drive,  we  came  to 
our  second  church.  The  prairie  here. was 
broken  up  by  small  canons,  interspersed 
with  streams,  and  was  quite  pretty.  A 
grocery  and  a  blacksmith-shop,  the  latter 
opened  Tuesday  and  Thursday  only,  com- 
prised the  village.  A  small  house  where 
the  proprietor  of  the  store  lived,  and  the 
church,  were  all  the  buildings  one  could 
see.  The  people  were  very  cordial  and 
intelligent.  The  daughters  of  mine  host 
were  smart,  handsome  girls,  that  could  do 
almost  everything,  —  ride  a  wild  broncho, 
and  shoot  a  rattler's  head  off  with  a  bul- 
let, and  yet  were  modest,  well-dressed, 
and  good-mannered  young  ladies. 

I  was  taken  down  stairs  cut  out  of  the 
clay,  and  covered  with  carpet,  into  a  room 
the  sides  of  which  were  the  canon.  It 
looked  out  over  the  great  expanse.  The 


LATEST  FRONTIER — OKLAHOMA.         309 

beds  were  lifted  up  so  as  to  form  walls 
around  the  room,  and  take  up  less  space. 

After  a  bountiful  supper,  I  looked  at  the 
church,  which  stood  on  a  sightly  hill.  I 
wondered  where  the  people  were  com- 
ing from,  but  was  told  it  would  be  filled. 
It  was  on  a  Thursday  night.  I  looked 
over  the  prairie  ;  and  in  all  directions  I 
saw  dark  spots  in  motion,  that  grew  larger. 
I  said,  "  They  appear  as  if  rising  from  the 
ground." 

"Well,"  said  mine  host,  "  most  of  them 


are." 


By  eight  o'clock  three  hundred  were 
there,  most  of  them  bringing  chairs  ;  by 
8.30,  there  were  four  hundred ;  at  9 
o'clock,  by  actual  count,  five  hundred  peo- 
ple crowded  in  and  around  the  door  of 
the  church.  It  was  a  sight  never  to  be 
forgotten,  to  see  this  great  company  start 
off  across  the  prairie  in  the  full  moonlight. 
I  spoke  to  some  of  them,  saying/'  Why, 
you  were  out  at  the  afternoon  meeting." 
-"Yes,"  said  the  man,  "I  should  have 
come  if  we  had  to  ride  a  cow  all  the  way 


310      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

from  Enid."  This  was  a  place  thirty 
miles  away.  This  church  was  built  by 
the  people,  one  man  working  for  a  dollar 
a  week  and  his  dinner,  the  farmers  work- 
ing his  farm  for  him  while  he  was  at  the 
building. 

The  church  had  not  yet  received  its 
chairs,  and  was  seated  with  boards  laid 
across  nail-kegs. 

Here  our  minute-man  preaches  in  houses 
so  small  that  the  chairs  had  to  be  put  out- 
side, and  the  people  packed  so  thickly  that 
they  touched  him.  It  ought  to  touch  the 
Christian  reader  to  help  more.  We  had 
fifty  miles  to  ride  the  next  day,  into  a 
county  town.  We  found  it  all  alive;  for 
nearly  four  hundred  lawsuits  were  on  the 
docket,  mostly  for  timber  stealing. 

"  Poor  fellows,"  I  thought,  "  Uncle  Sam 
ought  to  give  you  the  timber  for  coaxing 
you  here." 

However,  the  judge  was  a  fine,  well- 
read  man,  and  let  them  off  easy.  Deputy- 
sheriffs  by  the  score  were  stalking  about, 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA,         3  1 1 

with  their  deadly  revolvers  sticking  out 
from  under  their  short  coats. 

The  best  hotel  was  crowded,  and  I  had 
for  that  night  to  sleep  in  another  one. 
The  house  was  old,  and  had  been  taken 
down  and  brought  here  from  Kansas  and 
rebuilt.  The  doors  up-stairs  once  had 
glass  in  them ;  rough  boards  covered  the 
broken  places.  One  door  was  made  up 
entirely  of  old  sign-boards,  which  made 
it  appear  like  so  many  Chinese  charac- 
ters, such  as  Pat  said  he  could  not  read, 
but  thought  he  could  play  it  if  he  had 
his  flute  with  him. 

I  was  ushered  into  a  room,  and  re- 
quested to  put  the  light  out  when  I  was 
through  with  it ;  meaning  I  was  to  place  it 
outside,  which  I  did  not  do.  But  what 
a  room  !  The  wainscoting  did  not  reach 
the  floor.  Small  bottles  of  oil,  with 
feathers  in  them,  looked  awfully  supicious. 
There  was  no  washstand  or  water.  The 
pillow  looked  like  a  little  bag  of  shot, 
and  was  as  dirty  as  the  bed-clothes.  The 
door  was  fastened  with  a  little  wooden 


312       MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

button,  which  hung  precariously  on  a  small 
nail. 

I  took  off  my  coat,  and  put  it  on  again, 
and  finally  lay  down  on  the  bed,  after 
placing  something  between  my  head  and 
that  pillow. 

I  had  to  go  several  blocks  in  the  morn- 
ing to  find  a  place  to  wash,  so  dirty  were 
the  towels  down-stairs.  I  was  then  given 
a  house  to  myself,  which  consisted  of 
a  single  room,  eight  by  ten,  or  ten  by 
twelve,  I  forget  which.  It  was  originally 
the  church  and  parsonage.  Here  the 
church  was  organized,  and  the  first  wed- 
ding took  place. 

A  fine  church,  the  largest  and  handsom- 
est in  the  Territory,  was  next  door,  and 
was  to  be  dedicated  the  next  day,  which 
would  be  Sunday.  This  building  had  been 
brought  all  the  way  from  Kansas,  and  the 
very  foundation-stones  carried  with  it,  and 
put  up  in  better  shape  than  ever.  Three 
times  next  day  it  was  crowded,  even  to  the 
steps  outside,  many  coming  twenty  miles 
to  attend.  One  lady  came  twice  who  lived 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.        3  1 3 

six  miles  away,  and  said,  "  Oh,  how  I 
wish  I  could  come  again  to-night!  But  I 
have  six  cows  to  milk,  and  it  would  mean 
twelve  miles  to  ride  there  and  back,  and 
then  six  miles  to  go  home  ;  yet  I  would 
if  I  could.  Oh !  sometimes  I  think  I 
should  die  but  for  God  and  my  little 
girl." 

As  the  people  came  in,  I  said  to  myself, 
"  Where  have  I  seen  these  ladies  before, 
—  pink  and  lemon-colored  silk  dresses, 
pointed  buff  shoes,  ostrich  feathers  in  their 
enormous  hats,  —  oh !  I  have  it,  in  the 
daily  hints  from  Paris." 

The  men  wore  collars  as  ugly  and  un- 
comfortable as  they  could  be  made,  which 
made  them  keep  their  chins  up  ;  and  right 
by  their  sides  were  women  whose  hats 
looked  like  those  we  see  in  boxes  outside 
the  stores,  your  choice  for  five  cents ;  there 
were  four  or  five  little  sunburned  children, 
some  of  whom  were  in  undress  uniform, 
and  their  fathers  in  homespun  and  blue 
jeans. 

Close  by  in  the  canons  crouched  a  fugi- 


314      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

tive  from  justice.  Two  men  started  out  to 
take  him,  but  came  home  without  their 
guns.  Then  a  brave,  cool-headed  man  of 
experience  went,  and  slept  in  the  timber 
where  our  desperado  lay  concealed,  think- 
ing to  catch  him  in  the  morning  before 
the  robber  awoke  ;  but  while  he  was  rub- 
bing his  own  sleepy  eyes  the  words,  sharp 
as  a  rifle  report,  came,  "  Hold  up  your 
hands!"  And  number  three  came  home 
minus  his  shooting-irons. 

Oklahoma  differs  in  many  ways  from 
other  frontiers.  You  find  greater  ex- 
tremes, but  you  also  find  a  higher  type 
intellectually.  The  Century  and  Harper  s 
and  the  popular  magazines  sell  faster,  and 
more  of  them,  than  the  Police  Gazette. 

On  the  other  hand,  settled  en  masse  as 
it  has  been,  the  church  has  not  begun  to 
reach  the  people  except  in  county  towns, 
where,  as  usual,  it  is  too  often,  but  not  al- 
ways, overdone.  In  one  case  I  found  a 
man  who  was  trying  to  organize  with  one 
member  ;  and  in  another  a  man  actually 
built  a  church  before  a  single  member 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.         3  I  5 

of  his  denomination  was  there,  and  there 
were  none  there  when  I  left.  In  some 
cases  I  found  our  minute-man  an  old 
soldier ;  and  more  than  once  for  weeks 
at  a  time  he  had  to  sleep  in  his  clothes, 
and  keep  his  rifle  by  his  side. 

In  some  cases  the  Government  had 
located  a  county  town,  and  the  railway 
company  had  chosen  another  site  close  by. 
Then  the  fight  began.  The  railway  at 
first  ignored  the  Government's  site,  and 
ran  their  trains  by ;  built  a  station  on  their 
own  site,  and  would  have  no  other.  Then 
the  people  on  the  Government  site  tore 
up  the  tracks,  and  incendiarism  became  so 
common  that  the  insurance  agent  came  and 
cancelled  all  the  policies  except  the  church 
and  parsonage  where  our  minute-man 
stood  guard.  This  was  done  in  several 
places,  and  the  end  is  not  yet. 

Now,  to  the  general  reader,  everything 
seems  in  a  hopeless  muddle,  and  he  is 
glad  he  is  not  living  there.  But  remem- 
ber this.  It  is  better  than  some  older  set- 
tlements, where  men  had  to  give  eighty 


316      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

bushels  of  wheat  for  a  pair  of  stogy  boots, 
as  they  did  in  Ohio,  and  fight  the  Indian  as 
well  as  the  wolf  from  the  door,  or  in  Kan- 
sas forty  years  ago,  where  corn  brought 
five  cents  a  bushel,  and  men  had  to  go  a 
hundred  miles  to  the  mill.  In  order  to 
show  the  hopeful  side,  I  will  give  an 
illustration. 

I  was  to  speak  at  a  meeting  in  Illinois. 
My  way  was  through  Missouri,  where  spir- 
itual and  civilized  prosperity  has  not  kept 
pace  with  her  wealth  and  opportunities.  I 
was  entertained  in  a  mansion  built  sixty 
years  ago.  The  .city,  of  sixteen  thousand 
inhabitants,  could  hardly  be  matched  in 
New  England,  —  many  fine  streets,  shaded 
with  grand  old  elms ;  the  roads  bricked 
and  \vell  graded  ;  the  houses  beautiful,  ar- 
tistic, and  surrounded  with  lovely  lawns  ;  a 
college,  a  ladies'  seminary,  and  many  fine 
schools  and  churches. 

The  lady  of  the  house  said,  "My  mother 
crossed  the  mountains  many  times  to 
Washington,  to  live  with  her  husband, 
who  represented  the  State  there."  At 


LA  TEST  FRONTIER  —  OKLAHOMA.        3  I  / 

last  she  had  to  take  two  carriages  and  two 
horses,  and  it  became  too  hard  work, 
when  her  husband  built  the  house  which 
is  still  a  beautiful  home,  with  magnificent 
elms,  planted  by  its  original  owner,  shad- 
ing it.  In  that  day  the  rattlesnake  glided 
about  the  doorway,  the  Indians  roamed 
everywhere,  and  the  wolves  actually  licked 
the  frosting  off  the  cakes  that  were  set  to 
cool  on  the  doorstep,  while  the  Indians 
stole  the  poor  woman's  dinner  who  lived 
close  by.  To-day  a  park  adorns  the  front, 
given  by  the  generous  owner  to  the  city  ; 
and  where  the  wolves  and  the  Indians 
roamed,  lives  the  daughter  of  Governor 
Duncan,  with  her  husband  and  family,  in 
one  of  the  finest  cities  of  its  size  in  the 
world.  Nowhere  in  all  this  wide  world 
can  the  advance  of  civilization  during  the 
last  fifty  years  be  found  on  so  large  a 
scale  as  here  on  the  American  frontiers. 


3l8      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE   FRONTIER. 

XXXII. 

THE    PIONEER    WEDDING. 

As  one  travels  over  our  country  to-day, 
one  will  see  as  lowly  homes,  as  acute 
poverty,  and  as  congested  a  population, 
as  he  can  find  anywhere  in  Europe,  with 
this  great  difference,  —  our  people  are 
filled  with  hope.  There  is  a  buoyancy 
about  American  life  that  is  lacking  in 
Europe.  It  is,  as  Emerson  expressed  it, 
a  land  of  opportunity ;  and  this  difference 
is  everything  to  the  immigrant  and  the 
native  pioneer.  And  this  means  much  to 
us.  The  great  majority  of  immigrants  are 
from  the  most  thrifty  of  the  poor. 

I  have  in  mind  now  a  family,  who  once 
lived  in  a  large  city.  It  took  all  the 
strength  of  husband  and  wife  to  make 
both  ends  meet ;  but  -by  dint  of  rigid 
economy,  they  saved  enough  to  take  them 
across  the  water  in  the  steerage  of  a  great 


THE  PIONEER    WEDDING.  319 

ship.  This  couple,  with  their  little  ones, 
found  themselves  at  the  end  of  their  jour- 
ney on  a  homestead,  but  with  scarcely  a 
cent  left.  The  people  around  them  were 
very  poor,  some  of  them  living  the  first 
winter  on  potatoes  and  salt,  not  having 
either  bread  or  milk.  But  in  some  way 
they  managed  to  live,  cheered  by  the  hope 
that  any  move  must  be  upward,  and  in  the 
near  future  comfort,  and  farther  on  afflu- 
ence. The  same  economy  that  saved  the 
passage-money  kept^  a  little  for  a  rainy 
day,  no  matter  how  hard  the  times  wen^a  , 

When  I  became  acquainted  with  them 
they  owned  a  large  farm,  a  small  log  house 
and  stable,  several  cows,  horses,  pigs,  and 
poultry.  Around  the  house  was  a  neat 
picket-fence,  every  picket  being  cut  out 
and  made  with  axe  and  jack-knife  during 
the  long  winter  months.  The  vegetable 
garden  was  well-stocked;  but  what  ap- 
pealed to  me  most  was  the  richness  and 
the  variety  of  the  flower-garden,  —  roses, 
pansies,  wallflowers,  sweet-pease,  holly- 
hocks, and  mignonette.  It  was  truly  a 


32O      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

feast  for  the  eyes.  The  little  house  and 
the  milk-room,  the  latter  made  of  lillipu- 
tian  logs,  were  dazzling  white  by  the  re- 
peated coats  of  whitewash.  The  whole 
formed  a  pretty  picture  ;  and  for  so  new  a 
country  it  was  more  than  a  picture, — it 
was  an  education  for  every  settler  near 
them. 

I  tried  to  fancy  my  host's  feelings  as  he 
thought  of  the  sharp  struggle  in  the  old 
land,  and  as  he  looked  over  his  broad 
acres  now,  richer  than  the  farmers  he  once 
envied  as  they  drove  in  on  their  stout  cobs 
to  market. 

Near  by  was  another  home.  Here,  too, 
were  fine  gardens,  and  another  old  couple 
out  of  the  grip  of  poverty,  which  well-nigh 
killed  them  in  the  struggle.  This  good 
lady  was  once  the  only  white  woman  on 
a  large  island,  which  to-day  is  laid  out 
in  sections,  has  towns,  villages,  school- 
houses,  and  churches,  and  every  farm 
occupied.  The  old  couple  had  an  un- 
married son  left ;  and  he,  too,  was  about 
to  quit  the  parent  nest,  and  start  a  home 


THE   PIONEER    WEDDING.  $21 

for  himself.      And  now  I  must  tell  about 
the  wedding. 

But  first  a  word  about  the  climate,  soil, 
and  conditions,  in  order  to  understand 
what  follows.  The  whole  country  had 
once  been  forest,  the  home  of  the  Hurons, 
Chippewas,  and  other  tribes  of  Indians. 
The  Jesuit  had  roamed  here,  suffered,  and 
often  become  a  martyr.  Some  time  in  the 
past,  either  from  Indian  fires  or  careless- 
ness, the  forest  caught  fire,  and  tens  of 
thousands  of  acres  of  choice  maples  and 
birch  were  burnt  down  to  the  very  roots. 
The  soil  is  clay,  but  so  charged  with  lime 
that  you  can  plough  while  the  water  fol- 
lows the  horses  in  the  furrows  in  rivulets 
that  dash  against  their  fetlocks.  This  in 
clay,  as  a  rule,  would  mean  utter  ruin  until 
frost  came,  and  the  ground  thawed  again. 
But  not  so  here.  As  the  ground  becomes 
dry,  it  pulverizes  easily  under  the  harrow. 

This  section  was  subject  to  storms  that 
filled  the  narrow  streams  until  they  be- 
came dangerous  torrents,  sweeping  all 
before  them,  and  sometimes  making  a 


322      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE  FRONTIER. 

jam  of  logs  twenty  miles  long.  One 
spring  I  noticed  that  all  the  bridges  were 
new,  and  that  they  had  all  been  built  some 
four  feet  higher  than  before.  I  was  told 
that  the  spring  freshets  had  swept  every- 
thing before  them,  and  had  been  so  un- 
usually high  that  the  change  of  level 
became  necessary. 

It  was  the  night  before  the  wedding,  and 
I  was  preaching  in  a  little  schoolhouse  that 
held  about  twenty  people.  It  was  a  very 
hot  night  for  that  latitude,  and  every  one 
was  depressed  with  the  heat.  A  great 
black  cloud  covered  the  heavens,  except 
an  ugly  streak  of  dirty  yellow  in  the  west. 
It  was  not  long  before  the  yellow  glare  was 
swallowed  up  by  the  night ;  and  then  from 
out  of  the  dense  black  canopy  shot  streaks 
of  vivid  lightning,  forked,  chained,  and 
of  every  variety,  and  ''long  and  loud  the 
thunder  bellowed." 

We  were  not  long  in  closing  that  meet- 
ing. All  that  rode  in  our  wagon  had  more 
than  two  miles  to  go.  The  horses  were 
terrified,  but  to  those  who  enjoy  a  thun- 


THE   PIONEER    WEDDING.  323 

der-storm  it  was  sublime.  We  crossed 
one  bridge  in  the  nick  of  time  ;  for  it 
went  thundering  down  as  the  back  wheel 
bumped  against  the  road,  only  just  clear 
of  it. 

One  man  was  asleep  in  his  shanty,  and 
did  not  know  of  the  storm  until  his  little 
dog,  tired  of  swimming  around  the  room, 
climbed  on  the  bed,  and  licked  his  face. 
The  man  awoke,  and  put  his  hand  out  of 
the  clothes  and  felt  the  water.  He  sprang 
up  and  lit  a  lamp,  and  found  two  feet  of 
water  in  his  room.  In  the  morning  it  had 

o 

run  off  and  taken  all  the  bridges  again. 
And  this  was  the  wedding  morn.     The 

o 

bridegroom  had  been  away  for  the  ring, 
but  had  not  returned.  We  were  getting 
anxious  for  him  when  we  saw  two  horses 
coming  on  the  jump,  and  a  wagon  that 
was  as  often  off  the  ground  as  on  it,  as  it 
thumped  along  the  macadamized  road  of 
a  new  country,  with  stones  as  large  as  a 
cocoanut,  five  and  six  feet  apart ;  but,  as 
the  settlers  said,  it  was  good  to  what  it 
once  was,  and  I  believed  it  too. 


324      MINUTE-MAN  ON  THE  FRONTIER. 

He  came  in  splashed  with  mud  ;  but 
although  he  had  been  without  sleep,  vic- 
torious love  shone  in  those  light  blue 
eyes,  and  with  his  fair  complexion  and  rich 
rosy  cheeks  he  was  the  personification  of 
a  Viking  after  victory.  He  had  covered 
four  times  the  distance  on  account  of 
bridges  carried  away. 

A  hasty  breakfast,  and  off  we  started, 
forgetting,  until  we  were  almost  there,  the 
bridge  which  had  gone  down  the  night 
before.  We  turned  back  to  find  another 
bridge  afloat  and  in  pieces  ;  but,  luckily, 
the  stream  had  become  shallow,  and  after 
the  horses  had  danced  a  cotillon,  we  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  across. 

As  we  came  to  the  farm  where  the  fair 
young  bride  was  waiting,  we  found  the 
fields  under  water  nearly  to  the  house.  I 
hardly  knew  how  we  should  reach  it.  But 
the  bridegroom  and  the  horses  had  been 
there  before  ;  and,  as  the  water  was  only 
a  few  inches  deep,  we  were  soon  at  the 
house.  The  youngsters  were  all  in  great 
spirits.  This  was  the  first  wedding  in  the 


THE  PIONEER    WEDDING.  325 

family ;  and  I  remember  how  awestruck 
the  children  seemed  when  the  bride  came 
out,  looking  queenly  in  her  white  robes, 
but  soon  recovered  themselves  as  they 
recognized  their  own  sister. 

The  wedding  over,  then  came  the  din- 
ner. Who  would  have  thought,  as  they 
passed  that  farm,  of  the  world  of  happi- 
ness in  that  little  log  house  ?  And  the 
dinner,  —  a  huge  sirloin,  which  made  us 
sing,  "  Oh,  the  roast  beef  of  old  Eng- 
land !  "  Precious  little  had  these  people 
had  in  old  England;  but  now,  besides  the 
mighty  sirloin,  there  were  capons,  ducks, 
lamb  and  green  pease,  mint  sauce,  delicious 
wild  strawberries,  damson  pie,  and  rasp- 
berry-wine vinegar  for  drink. 

Thank  God  for  the  possibilities  of  our 
glorious  land  to  those  who  are  frugal  and 
industrious. 

After  dinner  we  sang  "  The  Mistletoe 
Bough,"  "To  the  West,  to  the  West," 
"  Far,  far,  upon  the  Sea,"  "  Home,  Sweet 
Home,"  and  "America,"  the  youngsters 
singing  "My  Country,  Tis  of  Thee,"  and 


326      MINUTE-MAN  ON   THE   FRONTIER. 

some  of  the  old  ones  "  God  save  the 
Queen,"  to  the  same  tune. 

The  young  couple  had  the  only  spare 
room  in  the  house,  and  the  rest  of  us 
went  up-stairs  into  a  room  that  was  the 
size  of  the  house.  There  father  and 
mother  hung  a  sheet  up,  and  went  to  bed. 
Some  grain-sacks  made  the  next  par- 
tition ;  and  a  young  student  and  myself 
took  the  next  bed.  Golden  seed-corn 
hung  over  my  head  from  the  rafters ;  oats, 
pease,  and  wheat  were  in  bins  on  either 
side  of  the  bed. 

To-day  that  one  family  has  become 
many  families.  The  old  people  go  to  church 
in  a  covered  buggy.  The  youngest  are  on 
the  home  farm,  and  live  with  the  parents, 
and  lovingly  tend  those  two  brave  hearts 
who  now  sit  content  in  their  golden  age, 
waiting  for  the  call  to  that  better  land, 
where  the  Elder  Brother  has  prepared  a 
mansion  for  them  and  a  marriage  supper, 
with  everlasting  joy. 


